Abomasnow's typing leaves it with a lot of weaknesses, but its greatest strength is its unique ability Snow Warning, which gives it unceasing residual damage against foes and a Blizzard that ignores accuracy. Abomasnow is also fairly heavy, so its Wood Hammer packs a lot of punch. Otherwise Abomasnow gets a good mix of attacks, with physicalGrass, Ice, Fighting, Ground, and Rock and specialGrass, Ice, Focus Blast, Shadow Ball, Water Pulse, and Hidden Power. Otherwise Abomasnow can tank foes with a combination of Leech Seed, Ingrain (esp. in no-switch battles) and Giga Drain, and wear them away slowly with Hail, Toxic, and Leech Seed. Abomasnow can also prevent evasive actions taken against it with Block.

Without a damage returning attack, Abomasnow's weaknesses are fairly easy to exploit. If you can outdamage its Blizzard attacks you should emerge victorious. Abomasnow dominates anything weak to Grass with its draining attacks, so avoid pitting Water, Ground, and Rock Pokemon against it. Stalling against Abomasnow is not recommended, Hail and Leech Seed put out (and mitigate in the latter case) far more residual damage than most opponents can manage.

Rare Candy buffs both of Abomasnow's offenses to Rank 5, augmenting its offensive presence immensely and letting it take full advantage of its coverage options from two very different STABs.

Other Notable Attacks:

Role Play: A useful situational move against foes with Flash Fire, allowing Abomasnow to be immune to their Fire attacks for six actions.

Worry Seed: For more Ability fun, Abomasnow can prevent a foe from using Rest while overwriting their abilities.

Cool Combinations:

Sheer Cold + Blizzard: An incredible 37 BAP combo that not only hits multiple targets, but also has no accuracy check in the hail that Abomasnow can provide. Be careful, as opposing Ice-Types are immune to this.

Bullet Seed + Seed Bomb: A simple combination that gives Abomasnow the ability to damage through a Sub.

Focus Punch + Ice Punch: A high risk, high-reward way to strengthen Abomasnow's physical Ice STAB. Use this behind a Sub or in an opening.

Absol has a very expansive offensive movepool and a few neat support tricks. With access to Taunt and Magic Coat it can shut down a lot of support options an opponent might use, while Snatch can steal away an opponent's intended boosts. It can inflict Paralysis with Thunder Wave and Burn with Will-o-Wisp. Absol's STAB Sucker Punch and Pursuit are quite powerful and punish attacking and evasion respectively, making it difficult to avoid Absol's assault. Its physical coverage includes Dark, Bug, Flying, Psychic, and Rock, with Bounce as an offensive evasion move and a powerful Fighting-typed Superpower. Absol's special coverage includes Dark, Fire, Ice, and Electric attacks. Finally, it has Counter to discourage strong physical attacks, and Perish Song if it needs to take a foe down with it.

Absol is generally frail and has no way to return special attacks. If you Burn it without getting it bounced back by Magic Coat, you can dampen its threat significantly, and finish it up with Fighting or Bug-type special attacks. Absol has enough coverage to hit most opponents for super-effective damage, so as long as you aren't weak to Dark the battle can be won.

Baton Pass: Absol's only boosting moves are Swords Dance, Curse, and Calm Mind, but it can Snatch or Psych Up other boosts and pass them along to allies, even if it gets trapped in by Block or Mean Look.

Me First: Absol has very middling speed generally, but if you can pull off Me First against an opposing Dragon type (or any Pokemon using attacks it is weak to, like opposing Dark types using Fighting Moves) it will work very well.

Razor Wind: Razor Wind has a unique niche as a move that can block opposing priority and multi-hit moves. It's very good in many circumstances and should never be discounted in battle.

Cool Combinations:

Quick Attack + Megahorn / Superpower: A basic priority combination. Used early in a match to minimize the stat drops on Superpower or as a powerful finishing blow.

Boasting mind-bending speed and passable offenses, Accelgor has quite a number of leg-ups over most comparable Generation V Pokemon. Accelgor's Acid Spray sets up any following special attacks for additional damage, in addition to allowing it to use Toxic on Steel types by corroding them. Its additional offensive coverage consists of Bug, Grass, Poison attacks along with Hidden Power, and Focus Blast on the special side and even less on the physical side, however don't let that deter you. Accelgor's primary appeal comes from his very esoteric combination of support moves, such as Encore, Gastro Acid, Guard Split, Knock Off, Pursuit, and Spikes, all very likely to occur first in a given round. Defensive options like Acid Armor, Agility, Bide, Endure, Recover, and Yawn make a very welcome appearance in Accelgor's movepool, giving it footing in competitive matches. Accelgor does have a draining move, Leech Life, which is buffed up to 6 BAP in ASB. Accelgor's Abilities are also an esoteric bunch, with Rain Dance acting as an instant Refresh and status immunity (as well as anti-fire) through Hydration, Sticky Hold keeping Acclegor's item in place until it needs to use it, and Unburden raising Accelgor's speed to amazing levels if it uses that item.

Accelgor puts its blistering Speed to work in almost every way you could want. At Size Class 2, Accelgor starts out at 50% Dodge against any foe that doesn't outspeed—which, as you're aware of by now, is quite the list. Accelgor's offenses are passable, and are likely to be overlooked by his nature, but they get the job done when combined with acceptable coverage and the ability to Guard Split particularly hefty foes. Accelgor's bulk itself is underwhelming, but again there are ways to buffer this throughout Accelgor's very precise movepool.

Accelgor can use the signature item Link Cable to buff it's attacking prowess to new heights, which is especially dangerous with its high Speed, Me First, and the ability to heal itself of paralysis in Rain. Don't underestimate Accelgor just because of it's shallow movepool, it can hit very hard and provide a great deal of support to allies, especially in multi-battles where it can cut a particularly sturdy foe's defenses down to size. Accelgor is still relatively fragile, just watch out for Bide returning damage and usually slugging away at it will lead to its defeat.

Other Notable Attacks:

Mind Reader: While Accelgor brings a maximized Accuracy bonus to the table, his potential partners need not be with this. Accelgor can lock on with this on one action, and then Baton Pass the lock to a slower ally the action after in order to set up a nasty Zap Cannon or even an OHKO move.

U-turn: This little toy can render all manner of Speed reduction attempts, such as Bulldoze or Scary Face, moot. It also shakes Taunt, which Accelgor is rather poor at preventing otherwise.

Me First: What a doozy of a move this is at Accelgor's Speed. Faced with a Dragon-type that threatens to one-round you with Outrage? Outrage back! Accelgor gets incredible mileage out of this in multi-battles, where he can take one foe's attack and fire it at another foe with a boost.

Cool Combinations:

Accelgor doesn't often employ combos—the negative priority offsets his biggest advantage—but he has a few that stand out nonetheless. Feint, in particular, combos well with several moves by granting high priority.

Bug Buzz + Struggle Bug: A particularly effective move in multiple battles, hitting all foes, lowering their Special Attack, and possibly lowering Special Defense as well.

Feint + Pursuit: Skeezing past all manner of evasive and protective maneuvers, this is the ultimate finisher after a drawn-out Endure war to shake away that last bit of HP. It also carries a desirable +2 Priority! Just note that it's Normal-type, so it won't affect Ghosts.

Feint + Feint: Yet another Feint combo, this elevates Accelgor's attack priority to a mindboggling +4, allowing it to outspeed even Endure! It outspeeds Protect, but it's Feint, so Protect wouldn't stop it anyway.

Feint + Final Gambit: If you want to get suicidal, this is the way to go, being able to bypass every evasive option an opponent might want to use and having +2 Priority.

Aerodactyl's greatest asset is its immense Speed and physical coverage. It has one of the fastest Taunts available as well as several flinching attacks, including Elemental Fangs, Iron Head, and its STAB Rock Slide. +Spe Aerodactyl patches up the accuracy of every single one of its attacks, although it also has Hone Claws if you opt to boost an offense or defense. Additional physical coverage includes Aqua Tail, Dragon attacks, and Earthquake, as well as Pursuit to punish evasive opponents. Perhaps the most surprisingly effective attack is STAB Sky Attack, which hits with negative priority but is incredibly powerful, and can be augmented with a recoil-free Double-Edge thanks to Rock Head.

Aerodactyl is also fairly sizable for its speed, making it a capable Bodyblocking Pokemon in non-singles battles. Its Special coverage is fairly consolidated, consisting of Ancientpower, Earth Power, Hidden Power, Fire attacks, and a few Dragon attacks, with a few outliers like Air Cutter and Ominous Wind. Aerodactyl's defensive and support movepool is limited, but powerful, with Agility, Bide, Fly, Reflect, Roost, Stealth Rock, Tailwind, Torment, and Whirlwind.

Aerodactyl hates getting paralyzed, and its massive Speed means any opposing Steel-type with Gyro Ball can do massive damage to it. Aerodactyl is also a lot more diverse physically than it is with special attacks, even taking combinations into account, so Pokemon with high physical Defense and a Rock or Flying resistance are good picks. Aerodactyl can almost always Taunt a foe first, but if you can Taunt it, it will be significantly less dangerous.

Everstone increases Aerodactyl's Attack and boosts its Rock and Flying attacks, making it much more physically dangerous considering the flinch on Rock Slide and Sky Attack (against lower priority attacks).

Other Notable Attacks:

Razor Wind: Aerodactyl is weak to several priority attacks, and Razor Wind's defensive whirlwind deflects them off while damaging foes.

Sky Drop: Aerodactyl is fairly heavy and can lift foes with Weight Classes up to six (6), making it one of Aerodactyl's better drawback-free Flying attacks on many foes. In multiple battles it can also interrupt foes targeting another Pokemon, making Aerodactyl a good team player.

Smack Down: It's Aerodactyl's weakest STAB, but it does open foes up to follow-up damage from Earthquake.

Cool Combinations:

Agility (Evasive) + Double-Edge: Who says Aerodactyl doesn't have priority? If you're in a jam, this can help you out as a finishing move.

Defog + Heat Wave: An effective way to remove screens and hazards while damaging all foes. Never misses to boot.

Snore + Supersonic: If Aerodactyl gets put to sleep, this combination will leave an opponent confused with 100% Accuracy on the turn Aerodactyl wakes up and is cooling down. You can use it in anticipation of a Sleep move as well, and move with lower priority after you get put to sleep.

Twister + Whirlwind: Blow all your opponents away with this attack in a multi-battle, it's even Taunt-proof, and Aerodactyl's Speed means it can time this at the same time as an opponent using a similar move and potentially flinch them out of it.

Aggron is an offensive powerhouse that takes full advantage of ASB's Weight mechanics, dealing immense damage with Block, Body Slam, Double-Edge, Giga Impact, Head Smash, and Heavy Slam. It doesn't even suffer recoil damage because of its Rock Head ability, and it can even throw Tackle into some combinations to give them a Weight-Based BAP Boost. Aggron is no slouch defensively either, with a huge Rank 7 Defense, Sturdy, and a Special Defense boost in Sandstorm to protect it against special attacks. As if its incredible offense were not enough, its low speed makes it an ideal Counter and Metal Burst user, and makes striking its 4x Ground and Fighting weaknesses quite risky. Finally, the only weakness in many of its powerful attacks is their low Accuracy, which Aggron can patch up with Hone Claws, an attack that also makes its physical attacks even more dangerous.

Aggron's coverage is also phenomenal, with Dragon, Fighting, Ground, Rock, and Steel attacks, as well as Elemental Punches, Shadow Claw, Dark Pulse, the 10/12 BAP Fire, Ice, and Electric special attacks, and even Aqua Tail, Surf, and Whirlpool for kicks. Aggron even has Solarbeam, though that's counterproductive in Sandstorm. Basically, it doesn't matter what type of opponent Aggron faces. Short of Ghost/Dark, Aggron has a move that can hit it for super-effective damage, and if that doesn't work it can just plow through it with its STAB attacks. Finally, Aggron's support movepool cannot be ignored. It has access to Dragon Tail, Roar, Stealth Rock, Taunt, and Thunder Wave to cripple foes or pile up residual damage.

Despite its strengths and a fairly slow Metal Burst, Aggron still has huge weaknesses to Ground and Fighting. Faster opponents can use combinations to get around ordinary uses of Metal Burst (but not Counter), but otherwise special attacks are advisable. In general you want to keep Sandstorm weather off the field and pound Aggron with Water, Fighting, and Ground special attacks. Scald is particularly vicious for hitting Aggron's weaker defense, having a burn chance, and for hitting with super-effective damage.

Rare Candy boosts Aggron's already formidable defense slightly more, and gives it a small boost on its Rock and Steel attacks. Aggron tends to fare better with more traditional items like Expert Belt and Life Orb, which capitalize on its coverage.

Other Notable Attacks:

Endeavor: While Aggron can usually do far more damage with direct attacks, Endeavor is very helpful if Aggron comes out of a battle heavily damaged against a foe otherwise resistant to its best attacks, which are usually opposing Steel-types. Endeavor's fixed damage can help bridge that gap.

Magnet Rise: Magnet Rise can help Aggron avoid some of the seismic attacks (Bulldoze, Earthquake, Magnitude) that give it trouble.

Rock Polish: Although Aggron also has Autotomize, its greatest strength is throwing its weight around. Even at -Spe, Rock Polish increases Aggron's Speed to 150, which is enough to tie +Spe Base 130s.

Counter + Metal Burst: A way to return more physical damage without breaking the Energy Bank. This will still work against Special Attacks, but will only return the damage Metal Burst would have. It also changes type to Fighting, so it can't be used on Ghosts.

Double-Edge / Giga Impact + Head Smash: STAB 17 BAP / 19 BAP + 19 BAP under Heavy Metal makes for the strongest single non-suicidal combination available, with either 90 or 85 Accuracy, at a staggering 39 or 41 after STAB is added. This is one of the main reasons Aggron is so dangerous.

Alakazam is a glass cannon with a few things going for it. It's a very quick Pokemon even without a nature boost, it avoids residual damage due to Magic Guard, and if it is statused, Synchronize will inflict the same status on the opponent. Inner Focus means that it will not flinch, which combined with Bide and Counter makes it quite viable against physical attackers whose main attacks have flinch effects (Iron Head for Steel, Waterfall for Water). Alakazam is also aided in using these counter-attacks with Recover to restore lost HP.

Alakazam's main means of offense are Psychic, Psyshock, Focus Blast, and Shadow Ball. It has other special coverage in Energy Ball, Grass Knot, Hidden Power, Signal Beam, and Zap Cannon. Alakazam's physical movepool is also very good, sporting a slew of Psychic, and Fighting attacks as well as Elemental Punches, so even a positive Attack nature can be useful. Telekinesis allows Alakazam to be a little more diverse in its natures and use its slew of highly inaccurate attacks (Dynamicpunch, Focus Blast, Zap Cannon). Its support movepool is incredible, sporting Disable, Encore, Light Screen, Magic Coat, Magic Room, Reflect, Taunt, Torment, Thunder Wave, and Wonder Room.

Alakazam can also use the Link Cable, which improves its Special Attack and Special Defense (highest true stats) by one (1) Rank, augmenting its focus on the Special side of the spectrum and making it hit slightly harder. Alakazam's general weakness is its physical frailty and difficulty dealing damage with physical attacks, despite its variety of them. It also dislikes being paralyzed a lot more than its target would, even though Syncronize dooms both to the same status.

Other Notable Attacks:

Dig: Alakazam has one of the fastest Digs in ASB, and even though it' Attack isn't that strong naturally, it does allow Alakazam to evade a fair few nasty attacks. Just watch out for Pursuit.

Focus Punch: Alakazam's ability to pressure opponents and lock down their options allows it to occasionally get in Focus Punch, which does immense damage even despite Alakazam's low Attack. It's primary targets are Pokemon with high Special Defense, low Defense, and a weakness to Fighting.

Guard Split: If you choose to lower Alakazam's Defense, Guard Split is a way to get more even with strong physical tanks.

Snatch: While not that useful against stat-ups, Snatch can steal an opponent's Substitutes or direct recovery attacks.

Shock Wave + Zap Cannon: Alakazam is another Pokemon with this combination, which is especially helpful in providing a strong coverage move. Since Alakazam doesn't have Thunderbolt, this combination can give it an accurate, powerful Electric-type assault.

Arbok is a Pokemon defined by a wide variety of attacking options with great abilities, but not much innate offense or defense. Intimidate lowrs the physical power of its foes, while Shed Skin protects it from status and Unnerve can ruin berry-based strategies. Arbok's physical movepool is vast, containing Poison, Dark, Ground, Normal, and Rock moves along with Aqua Tail, Dragon Tail, Fire Fang, Ice Fang, Iron Tail, Seed Bomb, and Thunder Fang. Arbok's special movepool is more constrained, consisting primarily of Poison, Grass, and Normal moves along with Dark Pulse, Hidden Power, and Mud Bomb.

Arbok is notable for support moves like Disable, Gastro Acid, Glare, Haze, Torment, Toxic, Snatch, and Switcheroo, in addition to its own triple stat-up in Coil. It can evade with Dig or punish attacking or evasion with Sucker Punch and Pursuit, respectively. As a first generation Pokemon, opponents should always beware of Bide. Arbok is also unique in its Bodyblocking capability. Even though it is only Size 3, its length is 3.5m, allowing it to Bodyblock very adeptly for its partners, as well as hitting the length threshold to have its Dig hit Levitating foes.

While Arbok is versatile, it isn't particularly powerful, and most of its abilities are defensive. It doesn't win many blow-by-blow skirmishes, so the best course of action is to try and outpace it in damage.

Rare Candy patches up Arbok's issues with offense, granting it a huge Rank 5 Attack and pumping up the power of its STAB Poison moves. As one of the several Poison-types with Acid and Acid Spray, Arbok can use those attacks to corrode Steel-types before striking with its STAB. Ground types on the other hand have to fear paralysis from Arbok thanks to its primary method of paralysis being Normal-typed Glare.

Other Notable Attacks:

Poison Fang: Arbok can inflict Toxic poisoning through Taunt by using this move, which also gets STAB.

Rage: Because most of Arbok's coverage is physical, setting up for a round of attacks with Rage is an effective way to raise Arbok's attack to outpace a foe's damage.

Stockpile: Stockpile is a means for Arbok to increase its defenses and access healing through Swallow, which isn't reliant on type matchups like its Mega Drain and Giga Drain.

Cool Combinations:

Mud Bomb + Sludge Bomb: The ending combination here is Ground-typed, with a 30% chance to poison, a 30% chance to lower accuracy, and 16 BAP.

Poison Tail + Aqua Tail / Dragon Tail / Iron Tail: By combining a Tail move with Poison Tail, Arbok has access to Water, Dragon, and Steel attacks of 19, 14, and 20 respectively, each with a chance to poison and a higher critical hit rate.

Arcanine combines good overall coverage with a few useful tools to become a formidable mixed attacking threat. Arcanine's physical movepool is extensive, containing, Dark, Electric, Fire, Fighting, Ground, and Steel moves. Its special attacks are more limited, consisting of Fire attacks, Dragon attacks, Hidden Power, Snarl, and Solarbeam. Arcanine operates best under Sunny Day, where its Fire attacks get a boost, Solarbeam fires immediately, and it can recover from the recoil of Flare Blitz and Wild Charge with Morning Sun. Both of these moves, along with Body Slam are weight-based, which work well with Arcanine's significant weight (at BAP 15, 11, and 9, respectively). Arcanine's other attacks of note are Extremespeed, a powerful priority attack, Outrage, a devastating attack against Dragon-types, and Reversal, which does more damage as Arcanine's HP drops.

Arcanine's abilities are each decent in their own right. Intimidate weakens the physical attacks of foes, while Flash Fire gives Arcanine protection from other Fire types under the Sun. It is unlikely an opponent will willingly activate Justified, however an ally using Beat Up can quickly raise Arcanine's attack to obscene levels. Arcanine can use Bide to return damage, or evade it with Agility and Teleport. Arcanine learns Reflect, Roar, Safeguard, and Will-O-Wisp for support, though it can paralyze with Body Slam or Dragonbreath 30% of the time.

Fire Stone gives Arcanine a boost to its Attack and activates its Flash Fire, making its Fire attacks even more incredibly powerful. Its Flare Blitz is made particularly formidible.

Other Notable Attacks:

Odor Sleuth: Useful against evasive opponents, as the majority of Arcanine's movepool is 100% Accurate absent other factors.

Overheat: Although Arcanine's Special Attack is the same as its Attack, Arcanine relies much more on its physical movepool, making Overheat an excellent breaking option with little immediate drawback.

Rage: If you know Arcanine will be damaged by an attack, especially by multiple foes or a multi-hit move, Rage is a very effective way to raise Arcanine's attack.

Arghonaut is a solidly built Pokemon with excellent offensive STAB and defensive typing. Although stat boosters are not as ubiquitous a strategy in ASB as they are in OU, Arghonaut's Unaware ability nonetheless makes it capable of boosting its own stats with Bulk Up or Work Up while ignoring the efforts of opposing Pokemon to reduce damage, and utilizing Recover to heal damage.. Iron Fist gives its punching attacks a little more power, and comes in quite handy for Drain Punch, Focus Punch, Ice Punch, Mach Punch, and ThunderPunch. Otherwise Arghonaut uses its Fighting and Water STABs along with physicalGround, Ice, Poison, and Rock attacks, only rarely dipping into its special movepool of Fighting, Ice, Poison, and Water attacks.

Arghonaut has several moves with altered priority, including Aqua Jet, Mach Punch, and Vacuum Wave on the fast side with Revenge and Avalanche on the other. Its support moves are few, but effective: Circle Throw, Embargo, Roar, Soak, Taunt, Torment, and Yawn.

Arghonaut is fairly bulky and has recovery options, so it is very difficult to take down. Fortunately it is not very fast and is very susceptible to Taunt and Toxic stalling. It is also recommended to bring a pokemon that can remove its stat boosts, as Arghonaut can boost itself and not have to worry about responding to opposing stat boosts. It also can't retaliate against attacks with either Counter or Mirror Coat, so blasting it with your best attacks is a safe move.

Scary Face: Arghonaut generally has middling Speed, so it can't completely take advantage of Dive. Scary Face lowers an opponent's spped and lets Arghonaut get the drop on them.

Swagger: Since Arghonaught has both Unaware and Punishment, Swagger can be a good way to make an opponent damage themselves before following up with Punishment, especially since Unaware only ignores opposing Pokemon's stats when attacking Arghonaut. When they attack themselves, the Attack boost counts.

Whirlpool: Whirlpool can trap foes and cause residual damage, as well as prevent opponents from switching out in a switch battle.

Cool Combinations:

Arm Thrust + Focus Punch: An excellent way to break a foe's Substitute as soon as it is made. Arghonaut picks up the Iron Fist boost, and Arm Thrust's multi-hit property breaks through the opponent's Sub and does spillover damage.

Constrict + Wrap: Lowers an opponent's Speed, and doubles the residual damage per action the opponent will incur from 2 DPA to 4 DPA.

Cut + Cross Chop / Night Slash: If you need to break through Reflect in a pinch, and don't have time for Brick Break, this simple combination will let either move always score a CH.

Bisharp combines a powerful attack stat with balanced defenses and a mixture of offense-enabling defensive abilities. Defiant raises its Attack permanently by two stages whenever one of its stats are lowered while Inner Focus means it can attack freely without worrying about flinching. Pressure, Taunt, Torment, and Bisharp's decent defensive typing and stats also means an opponent will have difficulty keeping their energy up, and will have to make themselves vulnerable during a Chill much earlier in a match. Swords Dance is also a swift way for Bisharp to use its decent physical coverage to damage the opponent. With a combination of STAB Sucker Punch and Pursuit to punish offensive and evasive attacks respectively, it's very difficult to prevent Bisharp from doing heavy damage.

Bisharp's bread and butter is its combination of Dark and Fighting coverage, with Aerial Ace and Psycho Cut to dispatch the only Pokemon resistant to both (Heracross and Toxicroak, respectively). Against slower foes (either through Thunder Wave Paralysis, lowering their speed with Low Sweep, or using Rock Polish) in can use STAB Iron Head to make them flinch. Bisharp's additional support movepool is limited, but it possesses Knock Off, Magnet Rise, Role Play, Snatch, Spite, and Stealth Rock.

Bisharp is a strong physical attacker, but it's one-dimensional and its STAB attacks have relatively low BAP. Pokemon with high physical defense and strong Ground, Fighting, or Fire attacks are very effective against Bisharp. Pokemon with an immunity to paralysis are also helpful, as that is Bisharp's only status option. Don't get overconfident though, Bisharp can easily punish opponents that are too hasty in attacking it.

Rare Candy boosts Bisharp's attacking prowess further, which provides a boon to almost all of its most common attacking moves. Pursuit and Sucker Punch also appreciate the added strength.

Other Notable Attacks:

Iron Defense: Iron Defense distinguishes itself from the other +2 Defense boosters in that if used before Bisharp is hit by a contact attack in the same action, it can cause recoil damage to the opponent. It's an effective way to dampen those attacks. If there's a water source that Bisharp can submerge itself in, Iron Defense can also purify Bisharp's skin and heal any Burns it might have acquired.

Metal Burst: Metal Burst helps Bisharp deal with bad matchups by giving it means to deal out more damage than any given opponent. Combined with Bisharp's high Attack, it's quite easy to exploit an opponent's attack and follow up with a finishing blow.

Stealth Rock: Bisharp can support a team in longer battles or switch battles by setting up Stealth Rock.

Metal Burst + Revenge: It forfeits Steel typing for Fighting since Revenge has an actual BAP (both are CT Passive), but it can be infuriating to Metal Burst against slower foes or foes using combinations or evasive damaging moves like Dig. Metal Burst + Revenge is in the lowest priority bracket (-6) and allows you to use Bisharp's devastating attack and Metal Burst's nasty damage returning ability at the same time. (Note to refs: calculate the Revenge damage, then add the return damage from Metal Burst if applicable)

Rock Polish + Stone Edge: This natural combination buffs Stone Edge to 14 BAP, 100 Acc, and gives +2 Spe. If you're going to use both in a round, might as well use them together.

Blaziken has two powerful offensive STAB types and two offensive abilities that make it one of the fastest, most dangerous threats in ASB. After a single round its Speed Boost activates, raising a Neutral Speed Blaziken to 140 Speed and a +Spe Blaziken to 161 Speed. Blaziken only gets faster as time goes on, and in the case of +Spe Blaziken, it even patches up the accuracy of its most devastating STAB Attack, Hi Jump Kick. It uses this high speed very well, having two evasive attacking moves in Dig and Bounce, as well as Evasive Agility to fall back on. Perhaps what makes Blaziken most threatening though is its ability to attack with similar viciousness with both physical and special attacks. Its great physical coverage of Fire, Fighting, Flying, Ground, and Rock attacks supplemented by Night Slash, Shadow Claw and Thunderpunch, is threatening enough, but it is supplemented by its Fire and Fightingspecial attacks, Hidden Power, and Solarbeam. Perhaps the best thing about Blaziken, though, is Mirror Move, which lets it get a drop on many foes that can hit it with attacks quite effective against themselves, such as Dragon and Ghost types.

Blaziken doesn't have much of a support movepool, really only sporting Will-O-Wisp and Roar. It does have a good deal of priority though, with Feint, Quick Attack, and Vacuum Wave, and at the other end it can scare away physical attacks with Counter. Blaziken can also use several stat boosters, including Agility, Bulk Up, Hone Claws, Swords Dance, and Work Up - all of which, along with Speed increases from Speed Boost - can be transferred to allies with Baton Pass. All things considered, Blaziken is a basic hard-driving offensive Pokemon that can usually outdamage its foes easily, and thereby win quickly.

Rare Candy increases Blaziken's already massive offensive prowess, and while it favors physical attacks, the +1 boost to its STAB types also make Fire Blast, Focus Blast, and Vacuum Wave that much more dangerous.

Other Notable Attacks:

Blast Burn: With Blaze and Rank 4 Special Attack, at Low HP Blast Burn can be quite devastating to opponents, especially if Blaziken sets up Sunny Day.

Featherdance: Although Blaziken is an offensive Pokemon, there are times when its unwise to attack. Featherdance can dampen a lot of attacks that hit Blaziken for Super-effective damage.

Reversal: At low HP, not only is Blaze active, but Reversal becomes more powerful. It can't be used in any tricks like Flail, but it can utilize Blaziken's Rank 5 Attack to do incredible damage.

Camerupt is the kind of Pokemon you could call a tank; Not only can it dish out lots of damage, but with the help of its abilities: Magma Armor & Solid Rock, Camerupt can also take hits fairly well too; further boosted with solid stats on both physical & special sides. Camerupt has decent coverage, with Normal, Fire, Ground, Rock, Iron Head, and Rock Smash on the Physical Side, combined with Fire,Ground,, Ancientpower, Flash Cannon, Hidden Power, and SolarBeam for Special coverage. Do watch out if you ever get a critical hit on Camerupt, Anger Point will make you wish you hadn't.

While Camerupt can attack, Camerupt also has some interesting non-attacking options to employ, notably Roar, Yawn, Will-O-Wisp, Sunny Day & even Stealth Rock, alongside staples such as Protect, Endure, Substitute, & even Sleep Talk if the opponent tries to put you to sleep. However, Camerupt does have some problems, being weak to common attacking types Water (4x) & Ground (2x). Although Camerupt's abilities do help alleviate this, the lack of instant recovery hurts. That said, Camerupt is a solid Pokemon that will fill its function of dealing lots of damage very nicely & will rarely let you down in doing exactly that.

Rare Candy boosts Camerupt's Special Attack and its Fire and Ground STABs, making its host of Special Fire moves much more powerful, and giving a little boost to its only physical Fire attack, Flame Charge. The increase in damage on its Ground attacks is also welcome.

Other Notable Attacks:

Flame Charge: Flame Charge is Camerupt's only Physical Fire Move, & it is an interesting move, dealing some damage & helping the typically slow Camerupt become faster, though this move tends to be situational at times.

Dig: Standard Evasive Damaging Move, Camerupt doesn't get to use this move to evade often given its low speed, but allows Camerupt to evade many standard double 0 Priority comboes, & even avoid faster Pokemon using Evasive Damaging moves. Like Flame Charge, this is also situational, but becomes far more practical under Trick Room.

Mimic: Another situational move, But Mimic can help Camerupt in a variety of ways, from copying an instant recovery move, to getting an extra coverage move.

Cool Combinations:

Eruption + Overheat / Heat Wave: This powerful combo at full health can deal massive damage to its foes right from the outset. Eruption with Overheat has brute force, but if the temporary Special Attack drop doesn't appease you, Eruption with Heat Wave is a viable alternative, even coming with a Burn Chance.

Selfdestruct + Explosion: This suicide move will allow Camerupt to deal massive damage in one bang before going down in a blaze of glory! Be careful as you need 53 Energy to execute this.

Earthquake + Earth Power: This explosive combo has comparable power to Earthquake + Earthquake, but is cheaper to use, can be synchronised in Doubles or higher (As can Earthquake + Earthquake), hits the opposition on both defences, & also has the ability to strike pesky Pokemon under the influence of Levitate / Magnet Rise! It also has the chance to lower the Special Defence of the opponents as well, which is nice.

Rare Candy gives Camerupt a boost to its Special Attack and its STABs, which is a great boost to its Fire-typed offense because Camerupts only physical Fire move is Flame Charge.

Castform is the perfect example of a Pokemon that is mediocre at best in the cartridge games, but has the tools to become a credible threat in ASB. It has the unique ability to change its type at any point in the match by using the appropriate weather move, then using its expansive movepool to deal massive damage. Due to it's exclusive ability Forecast, it is able to summon these weathers effectively and with less energy, while Weather Ball, one of its best moves, also sees an energy decrease. These traits alone make it a versatile threat to watch out for.

Castform doesn't really have a physical movepool to speak of, containing merely Normal moves, along with Avalanche and Thief. However, Castform more than makes up for it with a special movepool that stretches across the horizon. Its special moves include Weather Ball, which changes its type depending on whichever weather Castform decides to set up, a slew of Fire, Water, and Ice moves to take advantage of said weather, and finally several Electric, Grass, and Ghost moves to round out its coverage. Water Gun is notable for opening up opponents to damage from Electric attacks. Of course, it also comes with three different weathers to abuse. Sunny Day turns it into a Fire type that can launch powerful fire moves as well as Solarbeam. Rain Dance gives it a Water typing to attack with Thunder and devastating water moves.Hail gives Castform an Ice typing, and allows it to deal residual damage to non-Ice type Pokemon and utilize 100% accurate Blizzards. Finally, In ASB Castform's Forecast grants it immunity to Sandstorm, so although it will not change types and pick up STAB (and more weaknesses), Castform will benefit more than lose from its use, as it does stable damage to the foe and gains a rock-typed special attack. Using Castform generally involves using the right weather for the situation, then abusing the weaknesses of its opponent.

However, Castform's greatest strength can also be its greatest downfall. If it is unable to set up the right weather, it will usually have problems. For this reason, having a faster Taunt will harm Castform's efforts, while carrying another beneficial weather will also hamper its efforts and force the user to sub against it. Failing that, using tactics to stall or cancel out the weather, such as using a Pokemon with Cloud Nine, is always an option.

Everstone gives all of Castform's damage dealing and taking stats a boost, turning it from a mediocre Pokemon into a fairly powerful one, especially since its Everstone offensive boost changes when its type changes through Forecast. Castform's weather forms tend to be much better at Special attacks, although the boost to its Attack and additional Normal BAP actually gives Castform's Normal-typed physical attacks some firepower.

Other Notable Attacks:

Tailwind: Castform can use this to patch up both his speed and that of his teammates for several turns, which can turn the match in the team's favor. Additionally, if used before a Taunt user is sent in, it can allow Castform to use an appropriate weather move before getting Taunted.

Sandstorm: While generally not recommended due to Castform not being immune to Sandstorm, this can make Weather Ball a Rock move if one is needed in a pinch.

Clear Smog: One of the few Pokemon that get this move, Castform can use this to reset any stat boosts that may give it trouble, even through Taunt.

Disable: A very useful move that can be used to secure the chosen weather or prevent a devastating move from crushing Castform.

Cool Combinations:

Ember/Water Gun/Powder Snow + Fire Blast/Hydro Pump/Blizzard (respectively): Castform is the only Pokemon bar Smeargle that has access to all three of the moves to boost much stronger moves while using low amounts of energy. Use whichever one suits the situation.

Future Sight + Hail/Rain Dance/Sandstorm/Sunny Day: This unique combination allows Castform to delay a weather move for a later date, which may be useful for getting past weather wars.

Swift + Thunder Wave: When you need to spread paralysis to all foes quickly in a multiple battle, this combination spreads it out quickly, for light damage.

What immediately draws you to Chandelure is its massive Special Attack, which powers its movepool full of Fire, Ghost, Grass, and Psychic attacks, as well as Dark Pulse and Hidden Power. Chandelure's abilities are also helpful, with Flash Fire giving it a third immunity, to Fire attacks, while Flame Body punishes contact attacks that hit it, and Shadow Tag traps foes in all non-switch battles. Not only is Shadow Tag at it's best in doubles or greater battles, Chandelure's Heat Wave is backed by immense power and hits all foes. Chandelure also has Imprison, which shuts off the offensive output of most opposing Ghost types. Finally, its support moves include Acid, which lets it inflict Toxic on any Steel types not scorched by its Fire attacks, Clear Smog, Haze, Safeguard, Taunt, Telekinesis, Trick, Trick Room, and Will-O-Wisp.

Chandelure also has a few stat-up moves. Flame Charge has STAB and can raise its Speed, Calm Mind increases its Special Attack and Special Defense, Acid Armor raises Defense and can let it phaze into the background to avoid an attack if it's faster the action it is used. Finally, Chandelure may be the best user of Minimize in existence, being immune to Stomp and 4x resisting Steamroller. If it does get worn down, Chandelure can sometomes restore HP with Pain Split depending on the health of its opponent. Chandelure is also one of the few 5th Generation Pokemon with Endure, and it can bypass an opponent's Endure with the residual damage from Fire Spin.

Dusk Stone raises Chandelure's already immense Special Attack, and gives an excellent buff to its Ghost attacks and Dark Pulse, for the few Normal-types with Thick Fat sitting out there ready to sponge its Ghost and Fire attacks.

Other Notable Attacks:

Inferno: Chandelure needs to use Telekinesis first to have any good chance of hitting with Inferno, but when it does, it always burns a foe.

Memento: Chandelure can usually go out with a powerful damaging attack, but if your back is against the wall, Memento can set up your next Pokemon for a strong initial advantage.

Overheat: Overheat weakens Chandelure's Special Attack, which isn't all that desirable, but there's no denying its immense power.

Cool Combinations:

Overheat + Heat Wave: Absolutely destructive in doubles or greater, where it torches all opponents at once.

Cinccino is widely regarded as a powerful damage engine of a mon. Thanks to Technician and Skill Link, Cinccino gains access to powerful offensive options that allow it to disregard Substitutes and interrupt combos with astonishing ease.

STAB Tail Slap and the coverage pair of Rock Blast and Bullet Seed form the core of Cinccino's offensive plan. Boasting 20 BAP for 11 En, Cinccino kills fast or dies fast. These moves can be patched up accuracy-wise with a +Spe nature, leaving their BAP to speak for itself. In addition to this central triad, Cinccino can wield Technician Wake-Up Slap, Aqua Tail, Dig, Gunk Shot,Iron Tail, Seed Bomb, U-turn, and physically. Specially, Cinccino has some cute tricks such as Thunder and Focus Blast which synergize with a high accuracy bonus.

Cinccino has a myriad of support moves that could tickle one's fancy, such as Encore, Endure, Sleep Talk, Helping Hand, Light Screen, Sing, and Thunder Wave. Given Cinccino's relative frailty, these can be very helpful in keeping it in the fight. Cinccino's small size and large Speed also make its Dodge Command extremely effective, boasting a base of 60% (capped at 50%) to start.

The Scarf Pokemon is not without its flaws, however. It has difficulty hitting most Steel-types for significant damage, first and foremost. Rock Blast and Bullet Seed can hit a few targets that are neutral competently, but Steels and part-Steels require it to use Wake-Up Slap or Focus Blast to do significant damage.

Shiny Stone provides Cincinno with two boosts than help solidify its offensive ability by raising the Base Accuracy of its attacks by 10, helping Rock Blast and Aqua Tail reach 100 and bringing Tail Slap up to 95. Combined with the Attack Rank boost, Cincinno can really let its ability combination shine.

Other Notable Attacks:

After You: This causes the target to move immediately after the user, regardless of priority. At Cinccino's speed, this can have intense ramifications, such as lifting the attack portion of Focus Punch!

DoubleSlap: This is your back-up Tail Slap. It has less power, but it still carries the full weight of Cinccino's abilities behind it.

Flail: Tail Slap outclasses this right up to the barest pinch of HP, but Cinccino's access to Endure means it can see mileage out of 20 BAP Flail nonetheless.

Cool Combinations:

Flail + Tail Slap: A doozy of a death knell after an Endure. Carries 35 BAP at maximum, tramples over substitutes, interrupts slower combos, and rolls for critical hits five times.

Facade + Tail Slap: Punishing to anyone who attempts to lay status on Cinccino, coming out as a 22 BAP combo that doubles in power (and jumps in En cost) if the user is suffering from major status.

Conkeldurr is a Pokemon that benefits greatly from the All Abilities environment common in many ASB matches, taking it from a run-of-the-mill strong fighting type to an absurd powerhouse packing 12 BAP Elemental Punches with Iron Fist and Sheer Force, powerful priority, and if the user is Gutsy enough, they can push Conkeldurr's power through the roof.

Conkeldurr has excellent physical coverage, boasting a variety of Fighting, Ground, Rock, and Normal moves as well as Fire Punch, Ice Punch, Payback, Poison Jab, and ThunderPunch. It backs this up with a few defensive countermeasures like Bide and Counter to return damage, as well as Endure to survive a deathblow, Drain Punch to recover damage, and Mach Punch for priority. Taunt allows it to be disruptive while Foresight negates accuracy reduction and lets it hit Ghost-types.

Conkeldurr's special movepool is small, containing only Focus Blast, Grass Knot, Hidden Power, Hyper Beam, Round, and Snore. Because of this it is almost completely reliant on physical attacks, with Burn being negated and making it stronger. Conkeldurr is a generally strong Pokemon but if its abilities are disabled or moved around by Skill Swap it becomes much easier to manage. Counter is also particularly effective against it because it has relatively few attacks in-between 6 BAP and 10+ BAP.

Conkeldurr can attach a Link Cable to enhance its Attack and Defense ranks, increasing its ability as a physical tank and further improving its physical damage.

Other Notable Attacks:

Block: Conkeldurr's attacks are usually so powerful that it has comparatively little use for Block's anti-evasive utility, but it does allow it a minor amount of field control when combined with Taunt to prevent foes from recovering energy with Chill.

Dig: Conkeldurr's low speed makes it hard for it to evade with Dig, but it can at least lower the speed of opponents with Bulldoze, Low Sweep, and Scary Face to accomplish this.

Wide Guard: Much more useful in doubles where its priority negates Conkeldurr's low speed. It can also be used in singles matches against a few powerful spread moves like Surf and Earthquake as an alternative to Protect or Detect.

Cool Combinations:

Comet Punch + Drain Punch / Fire Punch / Ice Punch / Poison Jab / ThunderPunch: As Conkeldurr's only multi-hit move, Comet Punch gives its elemental punches and Drain Punch a way to bust through Substitutes with spillover damage. Poison Jab is perhaps helped the most because it will also pick up the Iron Fist boost in this combination.

Focus Punch / Fire Punch / Ice Punch / Thunder Punch + Wake-Up Slap / SmellingSalt: Conkeldurr's Abilities give it a number of high-powered moves begging for a way to enhance their power. Wake-Up Slap and SmellingSalt "help" the opponent when asleep or paralyzed, respectively, to get over it while eating a 24 BAP elemental or 29 BAP STAB combination.

Rock Smash + Stone Edge: Conkeldurr can take full advantage of Sheer Force and use this move to buff it's rock-type offense, resulting in a 21 BAP, 90% accurate combination.

Crustle is a rather odd pokemon in ASB to say the least. At first glance, it seems completely outclassed by Armaldo, who sports the same typing, but with higher attack, a bigger movepool, and many of the moves Crustle gets. However, Crustle gets two tools that Armaldo can only dream of having, Shell Smash and Spikes. Sturdy increases Crustle's bulk beyond what you would anticipate, while Shell Armor keeps it protected from critical hits. Weak Armor is interesting in that Speed boosts are often more critical than Defense drops, and combined with Counter can be very effective.

Crustle's physical movepool is light, but contains pretty much everything it needs, containing the obligatory Bug and Rock moves as well as Normal moves, Ground moves, Shadow Claw, Aerial Ace, Faint Attack, and Poison Jab. Sadly, Crustle's special movepool is nonexistant, consisting of Hyper Beam, Solarbeam, and Hidden Power as the only noteworthy moves. Crustle's primary method of dealing damage is using Shell Smash, which when combined with a White Herb pernamently skyrockets Crustle's attacking stats and speed to deal massive damage with moves like Rock Wrecker and X-Scissor, while remaining a defensive juggernaut. While Shell Smash's boosts are permanent, Crustle can enhance its stats further with Curse, Hone Claws, Rock Polish, and Swords Dance. Crustle also gets mileage out of Rock Blast due to Bug typing increasing the number of hits by one. However, Crustle can also use it's great defenses and abilities to become a good entry hazard setter with Stealth Rock and Spikes. Crustle's Block along with its heavy weight is good at punishing evasive actions, and Counter can send back strong super-effective physical attacks. Finally, unlike many Gen 5 Pokemon Crustle can Endure to get extra actions of survivability, and at low HP it can abuse Flail.

While Crustle can be a pain to deal with, it's not without weaknesses. If you can prevent it from using Shell Smash, it's offensive capabilities are subpar. The easiest way to deal with Crustle is to use a faster Taunt, since it prevents him from boosting his stats and from setting up hazards. However, anything that can erase or ignore Crustle's Shell Smash boosts is a good bet.

Rare Candy gives Crustle another boost to its Defense, which can aid it in using Weak Armor and also increases the power of its Bug and Rock moves slightly.

Other Notable Attacks:

Dig: It can be difficult to keep Crustle's Speed up to par to use Dig evasively, but even at low speed it can aid Crustle in avoiding combination attacks from faster foes.

Fury Cutter: Crustle can make use of his Bug STAB and Shell Smash boosts to deal massive damage with this move over time, which gets even more deadly if combined with a Metronome.

Iron Defense: Crustle's Shell Smash raises its speed to a respectable 136, even with -Spe, meaning it can often get an Iron Defense up before a contact attack, causing recoil damage to the opponent. Rock Polish can maintain or enhance that speed boost.

Struggle Bug: Crustle's Special Attack is mediocre and Struggle Bug itself isn't that powerful, but it does weaken the special attacks that tend to target Crustle, and it recieves STAB.

Cool Combinations:

Cut + X-Scissor: A nice reliable Bug typed combo that ensures a critical hit to ignore Reflect. It also doesn't take much energy to use, so it can be used several times in a single match.

Rock Blast + Rock Wrecker: A Substitute nuker. With Rock Blast as Crustle's only multi-hit attack, having a crushing attack with trampling damage can come in handy.

Rock Polish + Rock Blast/Rock Slide: A very powerful combo that Crustle can use to increase speed under Taunt and at the same time do massive damage and patch up the accuracy issue of the chosen Rock move. Rock Blast will make the combo do terrible damage to any single target due to the Bug STAB, while Rock Slide will do less damage to all targets on the field in a doubles or triples.

Sandstorm + Sand Tomb: This neat combo can set up Sandstorm weather even while Taunted. While it is a bit energy intensive, clocking in around 22 energy, it can deal good amounts of residual damage and boost Crustle's decent Special Defense stat, all while trapping the opponent.

Cyclohm is one of the most popular Pokemon in CAP ASB for its complete ability to control field conditions. Not only does it have every weather at its disposal, it also has Trick Room to deal with messy speed disadvantages, and Light Screen to ward off special attacks. It has direct recovery in Slack Off, Bide to capitalize on its excellent bulk in unfavorable matchups, and three highly useful defensive abilities that mesh well with its movepool. The most menacing aspect of Cyclohm is its coverage. It has Dragon, Fire, Ice, Electric, and Water for special coverage, but it can convert Weather Ball into a Rock attack via Sandstorm in a pinch, and it has Hurricane for when Rain is active. It's only real weakness is that it's almost entirely reliant on special attacks, and it has 3 notable weaknesses in Dragon, Ice, and Ground.

Rare Candy increases Cyclohm's Defense, protecting it even more against Earthquakes while also boosting its formidable combination of Electric and Dragon attacks. Very useful for Cyclohm's both offensive and defensive roles.

Other Notable Attacks:

Heal Bell: Not only is it excellent team support, it also helps Cyclohm ward off residual damage from Burn and Toxic.

Magnet Rise: Gives a temporary immunity to the most ubiquitous Ground attacks, though not all of them.

Torment: While not quite as effective at lockdown as Taunt, Torment gives Cyclohm another way to limit an opponent's options.

Donphan is a rough and tumble tank that combines a vast offensive movepool with high attack power, excellent durability and no serious weaknesses to overpower its foes. Donphan's physical movepool is expansive, utilizing Ground, Dark, Ice, Normal, Poison, Rock, and Steel moves along with Bounce, Fire Fang, Seed Bomb, Superpower, and Thunder Fang to round out its offensive coverage. Donphan's special movepool is pathetic in contrast, but some of those moves have niche uses.

Donphan also has a significant support movepool, boasting Rapid Spin, Roar, and Stealth Rock as well as a variety of speed altering moves from Bulldoze and Rock Tomb to Rock Polish and Scary Face. All of these are particularly helpful when utilized with Bounce to avoid damage. Sandstorm works with Sand Veil to further increase Donphan's evasiveness. Donphan has Focus Energy to ensure its attacks get critical hits, which are helpful in breaking through screens and getting around Burn. Donphan has Ice Shard for priority, and Counter to return physical damage.

Donphan is almost completely reliant on physical attacks, so it absolutely hates Burn. Taunting Donphan also removes some its support ability, and it has low speed to start. Sturdy shores up its special defense slightly, but it still does not enjoy high-powered Special assaults.

Rare Candy increases Donphan's Attack and Defense as well as its Earthquake damage, making it an even more powerful tank and rendering most physical attacks useless.

Other Notable Attacks:

Block: Donphan's weight is significant, so Block is a viable option to punish evasive actions. It can also act as field control in switch battles, which is helpful combined with Donphan's ability to both set and remove hazards, and phaze.

Endeavor: Donphan's excellent attack usually makes direct attacks more effective, however Endeavor can close the distance against foes it has a bad matchup with.

Water Gun: While it is very weak, it can be used to enhance Electric weakness and allow Donphan a fighting chance against Water-types by using it before Thunder Fang.

Cool Combinations:

Assurance + Fury Attack: An excellent sub-breaker, and combined with a previous use of Focus Energy it has a lot of damage potential.

Giga Impact + Bounce / Double-Edge / Head Smash: A power option for Donphan, allowing it to deal immense damage quickly with either Flying or Rock damage, resulting in 25, 30, or 32 BAP. Heavy Slam can also be used with it.

Dragonite is an extremely powerful Pokemon that owes its great success in ASB to its combination of excellent stats, an immense movepool, and its ability, Multiscale. Multiscale gives Dragonite an inordinate amount of comparative bulk the first round it is out, allowing it to muscle through opponents very effectively with its combination of Dragon STAB and Fire, Fighting, and Ground coverage moves to crush Steel types. As if that weren't enough, Dragonite has a competent attack from basically every typeexcept Bug, Dark, Ghost, Grass, and Psychic, in addition to all the perks of being a Generation 1 Pokemon, which include moves like Bide and Reflect, as well as other niche moves through the generation like Zap Cannon, Shock Wave, and the like. Thunder Wave is a common attack Dragonite uses to patch up its low speed and give it more attacks against adversaries. Dragonite's best trick is its priority attacks, with both Aqua Jet and Extremespeed to boost the priority of its other moves. Dragon Tail and Roar round out Dragonite's abilities by keeping foes from statting up or using Substitute effectively.

The truth is, aside from smashing face and Screens, Dragonite has very few tricks up its sleeve that can't be circumvented through common means. It's middling speed so it's Fly and Dive only reach their full potential after Dragon Dance or Agility, the latter of which itself can be broken by super-effect Rock Slide and Blizzard. Basically when you face off against Dragonite, it's going to be a slugfest. If you inflict it with Toxic or Burn early you won't have to worry about Roost getting it back to full health. Just we wary, Dragonite can last the long haul.

Rare Candy provides Dragonite additional power, especially in its strong Physical Dragon attacks. Its small increase in Flying power helps it greatly in Rain when it uses Hurricane or when firing off powerful Draco Meteors.

Other Notable Attacks:

Defog: In a face-smashing game, lowering the opponents Evasion and removing their screens and hazards is one good way to go about it.

Razor Wind: Dragonite's best answer to Ice Shard and multi-hit attacks. Opponents will have to throw them into combinations in order to get through this defensive mechanism.

Sky Drop: As the heaviest user of Sky Drop, Dragonite can use it against targets with Weight Classes of 8 or less, making it sometimes Dragonite's best Physical Flying STAB.

Whirlpool / Wrap: Dragonite's way of dealing residual damage, useful for breaking Endure. Only Jellicent can get around both - too bad it doesn't have Endure.

Cool Combinations:

Aerial Ace + Dynamicpunch: Dragonite is pretty straightforward, but it still uses this combination to great effect, inflicting a status it normally can't.

Dusknoir is a Pokemon that exemplified bulky offense, being able to slowly wear down opponents with its impressive 90 / 5 / 5 defenses and presenting competent offense with 4 / 3 attacking stats. Dusknoir's signature item, Reaper Cloth expands on its defensive capabilities by augmenting its Pressure effect and adding Levitate to make it harder to hit, as well as bypassing Spikes and Toxic Spikes on the way in during switch battles.

Dusknoir's physical movepool is the most expansive, including Ghost, Dark, Fighting, Ground, and Rock moves along with Elemental Punches. Its special movepool, is not quite as diverse, but still has Ghost, Ice, and Psychic moves along with Charge Beam, Dark Pulse, and Focus Blast. In battles against more defensive foes, Dusknoir has both Seismic Toss and Night Shade to do fixed damage to opponents. It has Shadow Sneak and Sucker Punch for priority, and can punish evasion with Pursuit. Dusknoir's support movepool is also sizable, with Confuse Ray, Curse, Disable, Foresight, Gravity, Mean Look, Imprison, Skill Swap, Snatch, Taunt, Telekinesis, Torment, Toxic, Trick, Trick Room, Wonder Room, and Will-o-Wisp. Dusknoir can also Pain Split to recover from damage inflicted on it, and Counter against strong physical attacks. In Doubles, Helping Hand along with Dusknoir's immunity to Normal (and Seismic Attacks with a Reaper Cloth) make it a great partner if your allies want to go nuclear on a foe.

Dusknoir's worst nightmare is Taunt, which shuts down its stalling options and forces it to utilize direct attacks. This isn't necessarily bad for Dusknoir, but it operates best when it can mix and match stalling and offensive tactics, and Taunt also shuts down its healing through Pain Split. Pressure does drain an opponent's energy fast, so Dusknoir is particularly effective against foes that rely on high energy usage attacks. If you can Knock Off Dusknoir's Reaper Cloth, you can greatly mitigate its ability to stall you.

Other Notable Attacks:

Bind: Dusknoir's sole residual damage attack, excellent for blocking a foe's retreat if it gets Taunted, or finishing off an Enduring Pokemon this turn.

Future Sight: By the same token, Dusknoir's Future Sight can delay an attack now for an attack later, which will also ruin a foe's Endure.

Spite: Combined with Dusknoir's already immense Energy draining powers, Spite adds fuel to the fire, making opponents have to Chill much more quickly than they might have anticipated.

Cool Combinations:

Shadow Ball + Will-O-Wisp: While almost every Ghost can do this, few have the luxury of Dusknoir's bulk during the cooldown phase, are slow enough to not really care about being hit when using negative priority, or a need to balance out Will-O-Wisp's Accuracy with a more accurate attack.

Empoleon possesses a unique defensive typing that leaves it with a few common weaknesses (Ground, Fighting, Electric) balanced by an excellent list of resistances. Like most "starter" Pokemon it has well balanced stats and a reasonably diverse movepool. In Empoleon's case, it gets several useful utilities in Bide, Agility, Yawn, and Aqua Jet for priority. It can use Swords Dance and Hone Claws effectively, and its ability Defiant quickly turns it into a huge physical threat if its stats are lowered. Empoleon's physical coverage is decent with Water, Steel, Flying, Rock, Ground, and a few other single-move coverages in Brick Break, Shadow Claw, and Avalanche. Special coverage includes Water, Ice, Signal Beam, Flash Cannon, and Grass Knot. Otherwise, Empoleon has few tricks, it's simply a bread and butter balanced Pokemon.

Rare Candy puts Empoleon on a more offensive path by increasing its Special Attack and Water and Steel STABs, giving its (fairly) unique Hydro Cannon even more impressive power, and shoring up its relatively shall Steel attack repertoire in Flash Cannon, Metal Claw, and Steel Wing.

Other Notable Attacks:

Defog: Empoleon is one of the few Stealth Rock-resistant Pokemon that can use Defog to clear screens for the opponent and hazards / weather from both sides of the field.

Stealth Rock: Empoleon has the bulk to easily set up Stealth Rock during a more extended battle or a switch battle.

Hydro Cannon: As a "starter" Pokemon Empoleon has access to Hydro Cannon, which causes Sluggish instead of a turn loss in ASB. At low health, Torrent Boosted Hydro Cannon can be a very powerful finishing attack, and it's more accurate than Hydro Pump.

Feraligatr is an interesting option in ASB battles. Its stats are reasonably balanced, making it an excellent pinch hitter in many situations. Its DW ability, Sheer Force, coupled with a wide array of secondary-effect-causing attacks like Crunch, Ice Fang, Ice Punch, Iron Tail, Metal Claw, Rock Slide, and Waterfall, makes it a powerful physical threat. Additionally Feraligatr has general Water, Dark, Fighting, Ghost, Ground, Rock, and Steel coverage. The boost increases the power of his special moves too, meaning that Ancientpower, Blizzard, Focus Blast, Ice Beam, and Scald can also be reliably used. Dragon Tail and Roar give Feraligatr an edge in Switch=KO battles, allowing it to nullify stat-ups and Substitutes set up by opponents. Finally, Feraligatr can retaliate against physical attackers with Counter.

Unfortunately, the blue croc's Speed isn't the best, meaning that sometimes it gets outspend and evaded by faster enemies. Thankfully, Feraligatr also has access to Agility, Dig, and Dive, allowing it to do some dodging of its own, or perhaps even fixing its Speed problem. Alternatively, it can ignore Speed altogether with Aqua Jet. Feraligatr has a great deal of control over stat-ups, with Agility, Dragon Dance, Fake Tears, Hone Claws, Screech, and Swords Dance.

Gallade has access to a very wide movepool, learning attacking moves of every type except Steel. Notable moves among these include Dual Chop , Fire Punch, Leaf Blade, ThunderPunch and Close Combat, as well as damaging recovery moves such as Drain Punch and Dream Eater. He also has access to priority in the form of Shadow Sneak and stat boosts with Swords Dance. Gallade's wide movepool combines well with Imprison for sealing off an opponent's attacking options.

Gallade can also be used to support teammates through status-inducing attacks, as he has access to moves that guarantee every status in the game bar Freeze (which doesn't have a dedicated inflicting move to begin with). Hypnosis sends foes to sleep, Will-o-Wisp softens physical attacks, while Thunder Wave slows faster opponents so that Gallade's less swift comrades can pick them off. Additionally Gallade can Confuse Ray, Disable, Encore, Taunt, or Torment foes. Helping Hand is also worth mentioning, as it greatly boosts allies' attacks in multi battles, as well as Magic Room and Wonder Room.

Dawn Stone unlocks some of Gallade's potential for Special Attacking, but also increases the power of its varied Fighting-typed attacks, and its neutral coverage in Shadow Sneak and Shadow Ball.

Other Notable Attacks:

Feint: Gallade can break a foes Protect or Detect using Feint in combinations very effectively with it's Rank 5 Atk.

Low Kick: Helps Gallade face down larger foes such as Aggron and Steelix.

Heal Pulse: Allows Gallade to maintain a more defensive role and increase his teammates' survivability in doubles, triples, and brawls.

Cool Combinations:

Cut + Psycho Cut / Night Slash / Slash / Leaf Blade / X-Scissor: A basic combo that takes advantage of Cut's natural critical hit guarantee when used in combos. Made especially effective in Gallade's case, since he learns five differently-typed variations of Slash, more than any other Pokemon.

Magical Leaf + Will-O-Wisp: Gallade's ability to burn is often forgotten. This combination is fairly weak coming from Gallade's Rank 3 SpA, but it does burn foes with -- Accuracy.

Teleport + Shadow Sneak: This combination allows Gallade to simultaneously evade an enemy attack and land a pre-emptive strike of his own. It additionally gets +2 priority for combining an evasive teleport with a priority move. It's not strong, but it is crafty.

Gastrodon is the sort of Pokemon that seems rather average on paper, but should never be underestimated. Sure, its stats are average with Rank 3 across the board on its offensive and defensive stats, alongside rather low speed & 110 HP, but what really makes this Pokemon work is its abilities, and movepool. Gastrodon comes with excellent abilities across the board. Sticky Hold holds Gastrodon's item in place, Storm Drain is its major selling point, redirecting all single-target Water attacks to it, and granting it an immunity to Water Attacks, granting a Special Attack boost each time Gastrodon is hit by one. Also, Sand Force gives it a boost in Sandstorm conditions, with its Ground STAB becoming stronger, as do its Rock Attacks.

Gastorodon's coverage is not the most diverse in the world, with both offences getting Water, Ground, Rock, and Normal coverage on both sides, But Gastrodon gets a little extra coverage on the Special side, getting Ice, Poison, and Hidden Power; There is no extra coverage on the Physical side. Alongside this, Gastrodon gets both Counter and Mirror Coat, forcing the opponent to think carefully about how they deal with Gastrodon. Gastrodon also possesses Dig and Dive, which while situational, allows Gastrodon to avoid certain moves. Additionally, Gastrodon gets Staples like Protect, Substitute, Rest, Sleep Talk, and Endure, as well as recovery options in the form of Recover and Pain Split.

Gastrodon is considered a pain to take down, and for good reason. Good Bulk, the annoying CounterCoat combination, as well as an immunity to Electric and Water attacks (The latter by virtue of its ability), and a typing that leaves it with a sole 4x weakness to Grass, taking down Gastrodon is no easy feat. The easiest way to get through Gastrodon is to Taunt it, before pummeling it with Grass Type moves, substituting for the appropriate side of CounterCoat where applicable, but be wary of its attacks, which can still pack a punch.

That said, Gastrodon looks very similar to its fellow Water/Ground bretheren, but sets itself apart from the others with several forms of reliable recovery, CounterCoat, and a great slate of abilities. Gastrodon is a powerful threat that most teams should cover. Look over this Pokemon at your own peril; It can single-handedly win matches if you are not careful.

Rare Candy gives Gastrodon an offensive boost that enhances its largely Special-attacking movepool and plethora of Special Water and Ground attacks. Earthquake does not mind the slight boost to its power either, especially when combined with Sand Force.

Other Notable Attacks:

String Shot: If you are a fan of annoying opponents with Roleplayed actions, then you will want to take a look at this move. Your opponent spamming moves requiring the use of their mouth? Why not use String Shot to muzzle it up! There are so many possibilities with this move, the sky is the limit! It is more than just a Speed-Lowering move...

Block: This sneaky move allows Gastrodon to stop Dodge/Agility (Evade)/Teleport (Evade) spammers in their place, dealing some nasty damage to them in the process, as well as keep a Pokemon it can easily slay on the field.

Clear Smog: A cheap way to erase all stat changes from an opponent, as well as eliminate Double Team Clones, albeit Gastrodon getting many spread moves.

Cool Combinations:

Brine + Surf / Scald: A powerful 16/23 BP combo that blasts all Pokemon on the field bar Gastrodon for a lot of damage, or a 14/19 BP Combo that has a burn chance, and the ability to work without an external water source.

Earthquake + Earth Power: An explosive, synchronisable combo weighing in at a modest 19 BP, that can not only strike on both defenses, but also bypass Levitate/Magnet Rise!

Sludge + Sludge Bomb / Sludge Wave: With a BP of 21/22, this powerful, Poison-Type combo can deal some nasty damage to Grass-Type Pokemon, with a high Poison Chance of 60%/40%!

At first glance Gengar doesn't look that threatening, but that assessment is wrong. Gengar in ASB is almost exactly like Gengar in an OU battle: its greatest menace is its sheer number of options. With Taunt, Torment, Disable, Hypnosis, Will-o-Wisp, Bide, Counter, Perish Song, and a repertoire of respectable physical and special attacks (Elemental Punches, Fighting Attacks, and Shadow Punch dominate physical coverage, while Shadow Ball and Focus Blast are the chief special coverage combination, with Dark Pulse, Hidden Power, Electric, Grass, Poison, and Psychic attacks for backup), Gengar can be difficult to nail down. In fact the list above is only a partial list of all the nasty things Gengar can do to an opponent, and the lynchpin of Gengar's success lies in its Speed. Once it shuts down an opponent's support moves with Taunt, it has a lot of freedom to counter each attack as it pleases or put an opponent into a difficult spot. It can even afford to take a few hits at first, because Pain Split gets it back to a similar playing field. Gengar's typing is also helpful, especially with poison's inherent immunity to Toxic. Gengar can also use Wonder Room to swap an opponent's defensive ranks, giving it a much easier time against certain foes.

Levitate is Gengar's only ability. Although its protection against Ground moves is reduced, Gengar still has an immunity to common seismic attacks (Bulldoze, Earthquake, Magnitude) and most users of Dig. Be very wary against foes with Ground attacks that differ from these, as they can and will hit Gengar for super-effective damage.

Gengar can use the signature item Link Cable, which increases its Special Attack and Special Defense, making it a Pokemon not to be trifled with. While this doesn't help it with Physical weaknesses, it makes it a much more formidable Special Attacking threat. Beating Gengar outright is difficult because of all of its options. If you can execute a faster Taunt, begin with that to pare its options down. If you start with turn advantage, make that your first priority even if you have to take a nasty status attack to do it. An attacking Gengar does a lot of damage, but you can reflect a lot of it back with Bide, Mirror Coat, and even Counter if you have Foresight. Otherwise keep an eye out for it, and try to use attacks that bypass Counter, break Substitutes, and in general make it more difficult for Gengar to play a waiting game alternating between status and offense.

Other Notable Attacks:

Destiny Bond: While Gengar usually does well enough to net a KO on its own, it can also occasionally get two in with Destiny Bond, which can rob even a healthy foe of 30 HP at the end of Gengar's useful "life."

Explosion: Let it not be forgotten that in ASB, a lot of stats are scaled to each other, and Gengar happens to have 3 Attack. While Destiny Bond can be more effective in some instances in singles, it's Explosion that can really take a toll in doubles or greater matches, especially since Gengar can combine it with Selfdestruct! BOOM!

Venoshock: Poison may be a terrible offensive type, but there's no denying that Gengar's STAB Venoshock against a poisoned opponent is one of the most brutal drawback-free attacks available. Underestimate it at your peril.

Cool Combinations:

Hypnosis + Dream Eater / Nightmare / Mean Look: These moves were made to combo with each other - literally. It's a very effective way to send an opponent to sleep without retaliation next action.

Shadow Punch + Dynamicpunch: fixes up Dynamicpunch's accuracy while keeping the confusion effect. Very useful against most of Ghost's resistances.

Sludge Wave + Venoshock: With aid from Dream World Exclusive Sludge Wave, if you've managed to poison your foes, Gengar can spread a massive amount of damage to the entire opposing field with this combination (Given STAB and Gengar's difference in Special Attack and Attack, the combination is as about as powerful as Explosion against poisoned foes, without KOing yourself). Just be wary of your own allies, who at least won't get the full brunt if they aren't poisoned at the time.

Gliscor is in its very essence, a Utility Pokemon. It can attack, it can defend, it can support, and it can even stall. It is because of this sheer versatility Gliscor is considered to be fairly scary to face. Its Abilities go a long way in aiding it to do its job, with Hyper Cutter preventing its Attack from going lower, allowing for consistent damage, Sand Veil allows it to become very annoying to face in Sandstorm, with random misses having the ability to annoy the opposition, and finally, Poison Heal means that Toxic-Stalling Gliscor out is not an option, instead allowing Gliscor to recover 2 HP per action when it is poisoned, which while minimal, can be beneficial in the long run. It should be noted that Gliscor can Toxic itself to bring out this effect, but it will count toward its healing move limit. Gliscor's stats are not the best around, suffering from the so-called "Base 95 stat=Rank 3" syndrome in its Attack and Speed, but it is not to say that he cannot do nothing with these stats, in fact, there is a lot he can do.

Gliscor's Physical movepool is massive, with 53 of the 97 moves Gliscor can learn falling into this category. With this, Gliscor has major coverage on the Physical side, with its coverage being Ground, Flying, Rock, Fighting, Poison, Dark, Normal, Steel, Bug, Thunder Fang, Fire Fang, Ice Fang, and Aqua Tail. Gliscor's Special Movepool, on the other hand, is limited, with the only coverage being Normal, Poison, Ground, Dark Pulse, Dream Eater, Hidden Power, and Struggle Bug. Alongside this, Gliscor has a whole slew of Status moves, most of which are disruptive in Nature. These many options include, but are not limited to: Defog, Detect, Endure, Mimic, Protect, Rest, Roost, Sandstorm, Sleep Talk, Stealth Rock, Substitute, Tailwind, Taunt, Torment, and Toxic. Gliscor can also trap foes with residual damage using Sand Tomb, which combined with Agility, a Dig that can hit any foe that isn't Flying-typed due to Gliscor's own Flying type, and its natural evasiveness in sand, Gliscor can drain foes quickly and easily stall them out. Taking this in, one can wonder why Gliscor is ridiculously versatile in nature; The fact that it can learn attacking moves of a whopping 15 different types (Factoring in Hidden Power), combined with its usable stats, its large support movepool, a solid typing, and very good abilities, it becomes the kind of Pokemon that can fit onto most teams.

Gliscor also gets his own unique item in the form of a Razor Fang. This item is massively beneficial on a Gliscor for a number of reasons: The +1 Attack Rank boost puts it up to a respectable Attack Rank of 4 (Assuming Neutral Attack Nature), it gets a higher critical hit Ratio, and a host of moves Gliscor gets is boosted from this, including the Elemental Fangs, Bite, Bug Bite, and even Razor Wind. The major reason one would want to use this is simply because of the added power to its main coverage moves; 10 BP Elemental Fangs and 9 BP Bug Bite and Bite are nothing to scoff at. Do note that if you use an item, Gliscor cannot use the powerful Acrobatics at full power, but with Razor Fang, it is justified. While Gliscor has a lot of tricks, it is not all sunshine for Gliscor, posing problematic weaknesses; a 4x weakness to Ice and a 2x Weakness to Water. What makes this such a problem is because the majority of these attacks hit Gliscor's weaker Special Defense stat, and because of this, Gliscor is unable to Counter most of these attacks, and is forced to resort to evading such attacks until an opening is found.

Rare Candy can also be used to boost Gliscor, but its effect is a little more dispersed. Where Razor Fang boosts its Attack and a multitude of coverage attacks, Rare Candy is oriented more towards Defense and boosting Gliscor's STABs only.

That said, Gliscor, while requiring some degree of skill to use effectively, is the kind of foe that many users need to prepare for, its sheer versatility allows it to act as a team player that can fill many roles at once, and can win games if it is used effectively.

Other Notable Attacks:

As mentioned before, Gliscor's versatility is massive, and as a result, there are many interesting options Gliscor can employ. Here are some of these options.

Power Trick: Power Trick can be seen as a bit of a gimmick on Gliscor, but it turns Gliscor from a defensive tank into a powerful attacker for 6 actions. It may seem like a waste of an action at times, but if all you plan to do while it is in effect is attack, then Gliscor is going to deal more damage in the long run. With an Impish Nature and no Razor Fang, Gliscor is dealing +4 Damage an attack assuming the attack deals neutral damage, and the extra damage will rack up enough to break even at least. On the flip side, Gliscor will take more damage from Physical damage, but when most Pokemon target it with Special Attacks, it does not matter that much. Even then, if your opponent targets Gliscor with Physical attacks, Gliscor can simply use Counter anyway.

Feint: An opportunistic move, Feint allows Gliscor to deal with troublesome Pokemon who decide to spam Protect/Detect. A handy move in Doubles or higher if you want to ensure an attack goes through uninterrupted.

U-Turn: U-Turn is an extremely powerful move for its effects, and Gliscor is no exception. Has your opponent managed to Taunt you in Switch=KO? Use this and Taunt them back. Your opponent decided to try and kill you with Perish Song? Use this and laugh as they fall to their demise. In Switch=OK, you can use this if things are getting a bit rough (When going second) and send in a new Pokemon to counter the opposition without initiating a Switch Phase! U-Turn's effects speak for itself.

Knock Off: Knock off, while not powerful, is a very good cheap shot attack that knocks off your opponent's item in Items=On battles.

Cool Combinations:

While Gliscor can certainly use comboes, it is not recommended to try using comboes; Gliscor is the kind of Pokemon where every action counts, and by wasting an action on a combo can put Gliscor in an incredibly vulnerable position, especially since Gliscor tends to draw attacks to it. Use comboes at your own risk, but here are some cool comboes that Gliscor can use.

Bite + Fire Fang / Ice Fang / Thunder Fang: With a Razor Fang on, this combo using its primary coverage moves can reach 16 BP and deal some nasty damage, with a chance of inflicting status and lowering Defense (And may even cause flinches in the right circumstance).

Acrobatics + Sky Attack: This powerful 25 BP combo (Assuming no items, 20 otherwise) will deal a lot of damage to the opponent. Do be wary that multi-hit moves disrupt this combo, but you can hit Pokemon after they use (Evasive Damaging Move).

Feint + Feint: At 9 BAP, this combo isn't that strong, but with a priority of 4, this is Gliscor's best priority combo, not only hitting before slower Endure users, but working against Protect irrespective of speed, outspeeding evasive moves of all sorts, and can also allow Gliscor a last-ditch KO when it and its opponent are on their last legs.

Few Pokemon in ASB possess the raw power Haxorus boasts. His Dragon-type attacks can punch a hole into any Pokemon besides Steel-types, while its coverage moves thin considerably the amount of Pokemon that can wish to stand in its path.

The bread and butter of Haxorus' offense are its attacks. Dragon Claw, Dual Chop, and Outrage allow it to shred almost anything into pieces. This is hardly a hyperbole: if Haxorus is holding a Dragon Fang and boasts an Adamant nature, any non-Steel Pokemon with an average Rank 3 Defense is going to eat a whopping 20 damage from Dragon Claw alone. Even Draco Meteor, despite coming from its paltry Sp. Attack stat, can punch holes into unsuspecting foes. Dark, Fighting, Ground, and Rock coverage complement Haxorus' STAB nicely, shattering enemy Steel-types easily - especially when Mold Breaker negates Levitate for its Earthquake, and Unnerve disables any Enigma or Shuca Berry they may carry. Aerial Ace, Aqua Tail, Iron Tail, Poison Jab, Shadow Claw, and X-Scissor provide further coverage, although Haxorus will rarely need it, thanks to the extreme power of its STAB moves (Brick Break is still nice to destroy screens, though). Haxorus isn't limited to attacking moves only, however. Taunt is a powerful weapon to stop foes from crippling him with a status ailment, and Haxorus has just enough speed to put it to good use. Counter is a deadly weapon that sharply limits the opponent's freedom of action in regards to physical attacks. Dragon Tail and Roar prevent most set up strategies - while also taking a big toll on the foe, in the former's case. Finally, Endure and Endeavor allow Haxorus to go out in a blaze of glory.

Haxorus has a multitude of stat boosters in Dragon Dance, Hone Claws, and Swords Dance that allow it to boost its damage even higher while boosting its Speed or Accuracy should it choose to do so.

Haxorus still has its weaknesses. Ice-type attacks put a large dent in it, and a fast Will-O-Wisp can cripple it severely, cutting its attacking power and preventing it from using Endeavor after Endure. However, don't think you can completely shut down this guy. Haxorus's power is nearly unmatched, and it will leave a big hole into nearly everything before going down - even against its supposed counters.

Rare Candy pushes Haxorus' Dragon offense into overdrive, granting it additional Attack and even more frightening power on its Dragon-typed attacks. Along with Mold Breaker and Rivalry, it can cleave right through most opponents.

Other Notable Attacks:

Scary Face / Rock Tomb / Bulldoze: A nice way to get the jump on faster foes who think they can take their time before Taunting you.

Toxic: Endure can be a nasty surprise for an offensive Pokemon like Haxorus. Toxic is a good way to prevent this.

Dig: Not as strong as Earthquake or Superpower, but still Haxorus's only evasive move. A good one as well, since it benefits from Mold Breaker and Unnerve.

Cool Combinations:

Cut + Dragon Claw /Night Slash / X-Scissor and Scratch + Dragon Claw / Night Slash / X-Scissor: An immediate way to deliver large amounts of pain into the foe. The Cut combo is particularly deadly if the opponent relies too much on Will-O-Wisp and Reflect to stop Haxorus.

Coming from the midst of bleary Sandstorms, Hippowdon is a solid Pokemon that can fit on most teams, Sandstorm-based teams in particular. Hippowdon is not your average pure Ground-Type Pokemon, possessing acceptable bulk with 110/4/3 Defenses, and is also able to inflict damage with 4/3 Offences. Hippowdon's true strength, however, lies in its abilities. Sand Stream is what makes Hippowdon, automatically summoning a permenent Sandstorm upon entry, and if it gets overidden by another weather, Hippowdon can simply bring it back for just 9 Energy. That is not all Sand Stream does, however, as the permanent Sandstorm also triggers its second ability: Sand Force. This ability boosts the power of its STAB moves even further, as well as giving its Rock and Steel moves a buff.

Hippowdon's movepool, weighing in at 59 moves (30 Physical, 8 Special, 21 Status), is smaller than most, but provides all the tools Hippowdon needs to be effective. Hippowdon's Physical Coverage consists of Dark, Normal, Ground, Steel, Fighting, Rock, Fire Fang, Ice Fang, and Thunder Fang. Hippowdon's Special movepool, while abyssmal is size, still allows extra coverage, coverage moves being Ground, Normal, Hidden Power, and Water Pulse. Hippowdon's Status movepool also gives it options, with staples like Protect, Substitute, Rest, Sleep Talk, and Endure, as well as phasing options in the form of Roar and Whirlwind, Status options in the form of Yawn, Toxic, and Attract, support options in the form of Stealth Rock, and a direct recovery move in the form of Slack Off. Hippowdon also gets Sand Tomb, which allows residual damage galore, Dig allows it to dodge slower foes, Bulldoze allows it to slow down opponents to its speed level, and finally, it can use Revenge quite effectively.

With a Rare Candy slapped on, Hippowdon gets a boost to its Defencse, as well as a buff to its STAB Ground moves by a factor of 2 BAP. Alongside the Sand Force triggered by its own Sand Stream, each Ground-Type move Hippowdon uses is likely to hurt a lot. Hippowdon enjoys the boosts employed by Rare Candy, which not only makes its STAB moves more powerful, but increases its already high Physical bulk even higher.

Typically, best way to handle a Pokemon as tough to take down as Hippowdon is to dispel its Sandstorm, Taunt it to prevent Sandstorm from coming back, and take advantage of its inability to reflect damage by pummelling it with Water, Ice, and Grass moves. Even then, a Burn can be very helpful, as Hippowdon will still deal a lot of damage, whatever you use against it. Additionally, Hippowdon is slow, so it is easy to Taunt, or use evasive damaging moves against. That said, Hippowdon is very hard to take down, and is very much capable of dealing lots of damage. Ignore at your own peril.

Other Notable Attacks:

Stockpile: Very situational, Stockpile allows you to take advantage of your opponent when they resort to protecting or evading your attacks, and if you manage to use Stockpile enough times, you can either blast your opponent with Spit Up, or recover HP with Swallow, but generally, you will want to use this move for the Defense and Sp. Defense boosts, which make Hippowdon even more difficult to take down.

Iron Head: A powerful move boosted by Sand Force, Iron Head comes with a nice flinch chance, but is generally overshadowed by other moves in its arsenal.

Superpower: Hippowdon can deal massive damage with this move, but generally, you will want to stick with Revenge, as it will have the same BAP as this when Hippowdon is damaged, and has no negative effects other than lowered priority. Besides, Hippowdon does not enjoy having its stats lowered.

Cool Combinations:

Revenge + Double-Edge / Body Slam: These nasty combos come at a priority level of -6, which is lower than Counter, and become Fighting-Type. Revenge + Double-Edge creates a deadly 21/27 BAP combo which deals massive damage, but causes recoil damage, whilst Revenge + Body Slam results in a 16/22 BAP combo which has no recoil, and a nice Paralysis chance.

Hitmonchan is a Pokemon that is usually overlooked, mediocre stats, middling speed, and probably the most important of these reasons, a mere 90 HP. These, however, all hide a powerful Iron-Fist boosted physical movepool, having coverage with Normal, Fighting, Electric, Ice, Fire, Steel, Dark, Ground, and Rock. It has powerful STAB in Revenge, Hi Jump Kick, Focus Punch, Drain Punch, Close Combat, DynamicPunch and Sky Uppercut. Its punching moves, boosted by the ability Iron Fist, allow Hitmonchan to have some of the most powerful coverage moves available. The list of moves Hitmonchan has that are able to be boosted by Iron Fist include Bullet Punch, Comet Punch, Drain Punch, Dynamicpunch, Fire Punch, Focus Punch, Ice Punch, Mach Punch, Mega Punch, Sky Uppercut, and Thunderpunch. Hitmonchan also has access to moves such as Detect, Quick Guard, Agility, Endure, and Bide/Counter for defensive maneuvers, and even has Helping Hand to give a very nice boost to its allies' attack power in multi-battles. Its only source of healing is Drain Punch, but as a 10 BAP (with Iron Fist) STAB move it is not necessarily a bad source of health. Finally, Hitmonchan can come in handy to remove hazards with Rapid Spin.

Rare Candy complements Hitmonchan's particular moveset very well, giving it additional protection against Special Attacks while augmenting the damage of its Fighting attacks. Mach Punch becomes particularly notable, the comination of Rare Candy and Iron Fist makes it an 8 BAP Attack before STAB is factored in, which is quite powerful. Drain Punch is lifted up to 12 BAP at the same Energy Cost, which makes it quite useful for both damage and healing.

Other Notable Attacks:

Foresight: Allows Hitmonchan to hit Ghost-type Pokemon with its numerous STAB Fighting-typed moves, and also gives it a chance to use Fake Out/Feint/Comet Punch on these Ghosts.

Fake Out: +3 Priority move that flinches 100% of the time on its first use.

Please note that Hitmonchan's movepool is very kind to combinations, due to having such an extensive list of punching moves. Only the non-obvious or notable combos will be listed here.

Comet Punch + Drain Punch / Counter: Comet Punch combines well with all Hitmonchan's other punching moves to break through Substitutes, but this combination is particularly notable for its ability to heal Hitmonchan through an opponent's Substitute. It so happens that all users of Comet Punch have this combination, but Hitmonchan is the only one with STAB to increase its power and slightly lower its considerable energy cost. Alternatively, Hitmonchan can use Comet Punch with Counter to hit foes trying to blunt Counter from behind their Substitutes. If it uses Foresight beforehand, it can even hit Ghosts with the attack.

Fake Out + Feint: Prevents Endure's use by flinching the opponent before it is possible for it to be used, allowing the user to KO the opponent in later actions.

Pursuit + Dynamicpunch / Mega Kick: A very niche response to evasive actions (including Damaging Evasive), it combines the perfect accuracy ASB Pursuit gets against an evasive foe with the pulverizing and confusion power of Dynamicpunch. As a bonus it hits before the evasive action takes place, meaning the target might even hit itself in confusion before it can get the evasive effect off. The combination typing is Fighting, so it gets STAB and the Iron First boost for a total of 23 Adjusted BAP. You can run from Hitmonchan, but you really shouldn't! For a version that doesn't confuse, but retains the Dark type, use Mega Kick to maximize damage output.

If you like strong, unrelenting Fighting-type attacks, you'll get a kick out of Hitmonlee. While it lacks some of the coverage of its brethren, Hitmonlee still possesses a core combination of Fighting, Dark, Ground, Normal, and Rock moves along with Blaze Kick, Bounce, Bullet Punch, and Poison Jab to round its movepool out. Hitmonlee is particularly known for its access to several more priority moves in Fake Out, Feint, Mach Punch, Sucker Punch, and Vacuum Wave. As an RBY Era Pokemon it can also take advantage of its low Defense with Bide, and it has Counter from less rare sources over the generations.

Hitmonlee's Abilities provide an excellent combination of offense and defense, with Reckless boosting its once-signature Hi Jump Kick up to an incredible 15 BAP, and Limber preventing its speed from being lowered or losing actions from Paralysis. Unburden works with a multitude of items to raise Hitmonlee's Speed permanently should the item be lost or used. Once at a higher speed than its opponent, Hitmonlee's Bounce can make it very difficult to hit it with conventional attacks, and it can utilize Low Sweep, Bulldoze, or Rock Tomb to bring this into effect. Like most Fighting types, Hitmonlee has a high number of available combinations, and the power of its Reckless Hi Jump Kick thrown into attacks like Blaze Kick and Mega Kick give Hitmonlee a huge damage advantage, easily hitting Explosion-esque numbers like 25 BAP, all before type is factored in. Focus Energy gives Hitmonlee to earn some critical hits, to buff its damage even more and get around Reflect and Burn.

All is not well though, a reliance on recoil moves can jeopardize Hitmonlee's admittedly sub-par HP, and with no healing move outside of Rest and no Taunt to hamper a foe's Recovery options, Hitmonlee can be worn down quickly. Hitmonlee's reliance on Attack makes Burn its #1 status to avoid.

Rare Candy puts Hitmonlee's focus squarely on its massive Attack, and boosts its Hi Jump Kick even further still with the Fighting power boost. Hitmonlee's ability to effortlessly break Substitutes with combinations with its kicking attacks and Double Kick make hiding from Hitmonlee's raw power difficult, and Ghosts are like to have no luck either. Hitmonlee has Foresight to combat them, if Pursuit is not enough.

Other Notable Attacks:

Double-Edge: While Hitmonlee only suffers from Recoil on Hi Jump Kick if it misses, Double-Edge is less nuanced about both the boost and the recoil.

Rapid Spin: Hitmonlee can remove hazards from the field as a part of team support, and its high Attack means the damage isn't necessarily bad either.

Wide Guard: Highly useful against spread attacks, which Hitmonlee often encounters even in singles combat. An inexpensive way to avoid damage in the right situation.

Meditate + Focus Blast: Though it has little use for Hitmonlee, this attack not only boosts Hitmonlee's Attack, it also ensures whatever is hit by the combination has a Special Defense Drop.

Submission + Seismic Toss: If you encounter a foe intent on Bodyblocking your target, use this combination to toss the Bodyblocker aside and deal fixed damage to two targets at the same time, well worth the effort if you can pull it off. Keep it mostly to doubles, though the attack does receive a Reckless boost.

Hitmontop is supposed to represent the "balanced" member of the Hitmon trio, and it does to a certain extent. Intimidate makes it more bulky than it might initially appear, while Technician does a great deal to boost the offense of its technical ability and attacks like Mach Punch and Fake Out, and give some moves with better effects like Rolling Kick a boost.

Hitmontop is thus the undisputed king of priority, possessing a huge number of priority attacks from Bullet Punch to Fake Out to Feint to Mach Punch to Quick Attack to Sucker Punch and Vacuum Wave. It can even block other priority attacks with Quick Guard and has Agility, Counter, Dig, Revenge, and Pursuit for more fun with priority and evasion.

It is this ability along with its Fighting, Dark, Ground, Normal, and Rock coverage augmented by Technician Aerial Ace, Gyro Ball, and Twister for coverage that makes up the core of Hitmontop's coverage. It should be noted that Hitmontop is one of the few off-type Pokemon with Drill Run, which makes it quite valuable against Levitate Pokemon, many of whom resist or are immune to Fighting but use Levitate to bypass the more common Earthquake. It has little in the way of team support outside of Rapid Spin and Wide Guard.

Due to Intimidate, Hitmontop's bulk is actually around average for all Pokemon, with its Special Defense balancing out its HP. Hitmontop has a great variety of attacks that have passable Base Power, but not many options over 9 BAP. It can be overwhelmed with force, especially with Psychic attacks for which it has no particularly powerful answers. It's utility should not be underestimated.

Rare Candy boosts Hitmontop's Special Defense to peak levels, while increasing the power of its Technician boosted Fighting attacks up from 9 to 11 in the case of Rolling Kick and Triple Kick, and buffing Mach Punch up to 8 (4 * 1.5 from Tech, then +2) providing Hitmontop a balanced boost of offense and defense.

Other Notable Attacks:

Bulldoze: While it's still weaker than Earthquake, Hitmontop's Technician Bulldoze can lower an opponent's speed and make it easier to get the drop on them, being much more valuable in multiple battles where it can lower the Speed of the entire field.

Endeavor: Hitmontop's lower Base HP lends itself well to the use of Endeavor to wear foes down before finishing them off with priority.

Focus Energy: The critical hits enabled by Focus Energy can give Hitmontop's repertoire of 9 BAP attacks a significant power boost over 6 actions. Triple Kick gets a significant boost since each of hits 3 hits gets the same +2 boost as a two-hit move would.

Cool Combinations:

Feint / Pursuit / Quick Attack + Triple Kick: The first hit of Feint + Triple Kick is only 6 BAP, giving the attack a final BAP of 9 + 3 + 3 or 15. Combine it with Focus Energy Status for 3 critical hits, and it goes to 21 BAP. The Feint version breaks through both Protect and has higher priority with Normal typing, while Pursuit is Dark-typed and the Quick Attack variant has Fighting-type to add STAB. Each variant does spillover damage through Substitute.

Hi Jump Kick + Mega Kick / Triple Kick: While not the most accurate, it does provide a great deal of power, with the Triple Kick variant being more accurate and breaking Substitutes (BAP 15 + 3 + 3 = 21). Just be careful of misses.

Twister + Rain Dance / Sandstorm / Sunny Day: While Hitmontop's Special Attack leaves much to be desired, if you need to control the weather through a Taunt, Hitmontop has access to three of them.

Honchkrow combines stellar offense with bad defenses buffered by high HP. The result is a dangerous mixed attacking threat that never sleeps (literally), has lots of Moxie, and has Super Luck. These abilities make Honchkrow even more effective since there is one less way to make it miss a turn, and it doesn't miss Rest much since it has Roost.

Honchkrow's attack options aren't actually all that varied, its the coverage that matters, and with Dark, Flying, Ghost, Psychic, Steel Wing, Superpower, Icy Wind, Heat Wave, and Hidden Power, as its physical and special mainstays it has just enough versatility to put a major dent in most foes, with Mirror Move to punish any foe using attacks they're vulnerable to.

Honchkrow's support movepool is much deeper than its attacking movepool would suggest, with Haze, Mean Look, Perish Song, Psycho Shift, Tailwind, Taunt, Thunder Wave, Torment, and Whirlwind comprising the most notable moves.

Honchkrow is another high-attack Dark type that relishes the duality of Pursuit and Sucker Punch to punish opposing actions, and the addition of the priority Quick Attack, evasive Fly and a powerful Brave Bird, Sky Attack, and Superpower to back it up makes Honchkrow a high-risk, high reward choice. Superpower with Haze is notable for being able to erase its own stat drops, though it will also wipe out anything gained from Moxie.

Dusk Stone gives Honchkrow an extra push on offense, especially for its Dark-typed moves. With the item equipped opponents need to be very careful of their actions because Honchkrow has an unpleasant and damaging answer to each move. If you can lure out Brave Bird though and pummel it with strong super-effective attacks, eventually that high HP gives out.

Other Notable Attacks:

Defog: Defog can reset hazards and screens on both sides of the field, which is generally more useful for Honchkrow because of its Stealth Rock weakness and limited ability to break through Screens otherwise.

Night Shade: While Murkrow can normally do plenty of damage, against certain foes (primarily Rock-types with high Defense that can easily tank Superpower hits), the fixed damage of Night Shade can come in handy.

Quash: Quash can disrupt the timing of foes attacks in a multiple battle, and works quite well if Honchkrow has set up a Tailwind for its allies.

Cool Combinations:

Hyper Beam + Dark Pulse / Hidden Power / Shadow Ball: Honchrow doesn't have much in the way of "beam" attacks, but this combination gives it a little bit of a power boost to those special attacks.

Icy Wind + Heat Wave: Not many Pokemon get this combination of moves, but those that do can use it in multiple battles to add a nice speed lowering effect to their spread fire attack, as well as a little power boost.

Twister + Whirlwind: An excellent way to clear out foes in a multiple switch battle.

Hydreigon's preferred method of battle is very simple: complete destruction of whatever is in front of it. It's Dragon and Dark STABs, along with an expansive coverage movepool provide excellent offensive pressure. Hydreigon's limited support moves of Reflect, Taunt, Torment, and Thunder Wave are themselves key to maintaining offensive presence. Otherwise the vast majority of its moves are damaging attacks, including moves from Dark, Dragon, Ground, Normal, and Rock moves along with Aqua Tail, Acrobatics, Fire Fang, Ice Fang, Iron Tail, Superpower, Thunder Fang, U-turn, and Zen Headbutt for physical attacks and Fire Special attacks, Earth Power, Flash Cannon, Focus Blast, Hidden Power, Signal Beam, and Surf for special attacks. Hydreigon has Fly to provide it some evasive offense, and Work Up as it's sole stat-raisng move. Tailwind can double its speed quickly, while Double Hit can be combined with the rest of Hydreigon's movepool to break Substitutes, but the combination leaves it vulnerable the next action. Roar and Dragon Tail can phaze foes, with the latter getting STAB.

In general the best way to handle Hydreigon is to avoid paralysis and use its common Fighting, Ice, and Dragon weaknesses against it. Hydreigon is fairly average defensively, but if can deliver a beatdown if you aren't careful. It is weak to several forms of priority so finishing it off is not difficult, taking the hits it throws out are. Its resistance to Pursuit actually makes Double Team one of its better strategies, so watch out for it.

Rare Candy gives Hydreigon a boost to its Special Attack, which aids a large portion of its most powerful attacks, from Fire Blast and Dark Pulse to Draco Meteor, the latter two of which also benefit from a type boosting. The additional damage on Crunch and Outrage is not minded, either.

Other Notable Attacks:

Body Slam: Hydreigon is fairly hefty, and it can use Body Slam to paralyze foes that are immune to Electric attacks.

Draco Meteor: Hydreigon relies a lot on its special attacks, so the -2 SpA drop from Draco Meteor is not very desirable, however there's no denying its an awesomely powerful attack. Use it the first action of a round to minimize the down time from it.

Swagger: It's risky against physical attackers, but Hydreigon can follow up a Swagger with Psych Up and claim the Attack benefits for itself.

Focus Energy + Stone Edge: Hydreigon can't break through Screens with Brick Break, but this combination always scores a critical hit and makes it more likely for Hydreigon to score more critical hits for the 4 actions after the cooldown.

Hyper Voice + Roar: Clears out all foes in a multiple battle and does decent damage.

Kadabra is a case study in the oddities of ASB. Given a certain nature and item it becomes a highly competitive Pokemon in a Gym. The first thing you'll notice is Kadabra maximizes the accuracy boost, meaning its Dynamicpunch and Zap Cannon have +25 Accuracy, going from a dismal 50 to a credible 75. This combined with Kadabra's smaller Size Class (2 to Alakazam's 3) means its Dodge Command starts out at a base reduction of 45. Second, because of Eviolite, Kadabra has passable defensive prowess otherwise. Kadabra has both Recycle and Trick, meaning it only has to fear Embargo and Magic Room since they disable items without removing them. Finally, Magic Guard means Kadabra won't feel the effects of residual damage, so Eviolite is a near perfect item for it.

Whether you want Hasty, Jolly, or Timid is up to you. Hasty keeps Kadabra's physical defense low while maximizing offense, Jolly cuts into Special Attack but maintains defenses and existent Attack, while Timid leaves its physical attacks very weak. Either way Kadabra only really misses out on Alazakam's Focus Blast and Hyper Beam, keeping its coverage of Psychic, Electric, and Grass attacks along with Shadow Ball and Signal Beam. In general Kadabra will want to stick with its support options like Disable, Thunder Wave, Light Screen, Reflect, Encore, and Taunt, while using Magic Coat against paralysis inducers where it can and Wonder Room to hit foes on their weaker defense if necessary. The combination of Bide, Counter, more solid defenses, and Recover also come in handy. Otherwise Kadabra is still a very fast, decently powerful offensive Pokemon which, through a combination of Eviolite and Accuracy, is quite capable of holding its own.

Other Notable Attacks:

Foul Play: Kadabra's focus on Defenses and Speed often leave it lacking Attack power, Foul Play can be used against opponents with high Atk and low defense for decent damage.

Psywave: Although it still has powerful attacks, if you opt for Hasty or Jolly, Psywave does fixed damage at 10 and Kadabra can take on Dark types with Dynamicpunch.

Teleport: Teleport can be used evasively quite effectively by Kadabra, which already has high speed.

Cool Combinations:

Charge Beam + Zap Cannon: Kadabra's maximized Speed boost makes this attack have a 100% Accuracy, letting Kadabra paralyze a foe while potentially raising its own Special Attack. It's only 1 BAP less than the Shock Wave combination, but the effect is much better.

Psychic + Psyshock: Since Kadabra is Psychic, it can lift foes of any Weight Class. Although heavier Pokemon tend to have stronger Physical defense, this is a good way of breaking through those that don't.

Kitsunoh was designed as the ultimate scout, but in ASB it's one of the strongest defensive Pokemon because of its typing and Cursed Body, which eliminate the few effective offensive options against it. Combine it with the unique offensive potential of ShadowStrike and a solid physical movepool consisting of Ghost, Steel, Dark, Fighting, and Ground moves along with Ice Punch, Rock Slide, ThunderPunch, and U-turn and Kitsunoh can have frightening physical prowess.

Kitsunoh also has a few other tricks in its repertoire, including Fake Out, Imprison, Magic Coat, Perish Song, Psycho Shift, Roar, Safeguard, Trick, Taunt, Torment, Will-O-Wisp, and Yawn, as well as Curse with Pain Split, as large an energy drain as that is. It does have Metal Burst, although its high speed makes it difficult to use outside a combination.

In general Kitsunoh's best offense against strong physically defensive Pokemon is to Burn them and try and outlast their attacks. Kitsunoh's inability to get off the Ground makes Earthquake and Earth Power ideal attacks against it, and it's no fan of Fire attacks either. While Kitsunoh's defenses are solid, its bag of tricks is actually smaller than a lot of its Ghost-type brethren. To be sure it can perform several nasty effects, but it's offense is generally more predictable.

Rare Candy gives a boost to Kitsunoh's offensive presence that is quite appreciated, and the additional STAB boosts are helpful to its unique ShadowStrike attack as well as Iron Head.

Other Notable Attacks:

Dig: Dig renders Kitsunoh extremely vulnerable to Earthquake but is an excellent damaging evasive option for it otherwise. It is especially helpful since Kitsunoh cannot be paralyzed and thus have its Speed lowered.

Endeavor: Not only can Kitsunoh shut down unprepared opponents, if it finds itself facing a fresh opponent, Endeavor can cut the foe down to size quickly.

Super Fang: Often Kitsunoh's most effective weapon against the sturdiest foes, doing great damage especially to foes with a high initial HP. Combined with Curse and Endeavor, Kitsunoh's repertoire against fors of all HP levels is quite impressive.

Cool Combinations:

Metal Bust + Revenge: This combination fixes the speed problems associated with Metal Burst by dropping it down to -6 Priority. It does sacrifice Steel type to Fighting though, so it won't work against opposing ghosts. Kitsunoh also needs to be careful on the next action as it is left quite vulnerable. As oood as its typing is, its STABs aren't that favorable for winning a damage war.

Shadow Sneak + Meteor Mash: / ShadowStrike: Kitsunoh does get a few powerful STAB moves relatively speaking considering its type, and this swift attack gives them a bit of priority for a finishing blow. Both attacks also have effects that can make Kitsunoh's next attack more powerful.

Snore + Metal Sound: Kitsunoh's Special Movepool isn't as notable as its physical one, but it can use this combination while sleeping to pick up STAB and a quick -2SpD boost.

For a Pokemon whose movepool is rather tiny compared to most, Klinklang can accomplish a lot. Klinklang as a Pokemon carries very decent stats, only its HP being mediocre, but is backed up with a great mix of offence and defense, as well as an average 90 Speed. It should be noted that with a +Speed Nature, Klinklang's Dodge command hits an impressive base dodge rate of 52% (Capped at 50%). That aside, looking at its abilities, Plus and Minus paired on one Pokemon gives Klinklang four (4) additional Base Attack Power on each of its Special attacks, making them quite powerful. Clear Body is a nice ability which protects it from Intimidate, Illuminate, and all other stat-reduction strategies.

Movepool speaking, Klinklang has a horribly short movepool, with its coverage limited to just Steel, Electric, Normal, Rock Smash, Signal Beam, and Hidden Power. Out of these attacking moves, a few stand out. One of its Signature Moves: Gear Grind is arguably Klinklang's most important asset, coming off STAB, Rank 4 Attack, an effective 10 BAP, and the ability to pierce, as well as disrupt charge moves like Solarbeam and Sky Attack, due to it hitting twice. Bind gives Klinklang a usable trapping move to keep Pokemon in and bypass Endure, and finally, Volt Switch allows it to switch out in Switch=OK on a bad matchup for a better Pokemon, or erase all minor status conditions in Switch=KO. As for its non-attacking moves, Klinklang still gets your standard fare of Toxic, Protect, Substitute, Rest, and Sleep Talk, but the other Signature move Klinklang has: Shift Gear, is what really stands out. For 6 Actions, Klinklang gains +1 Attack and +2 Speed (Or +1 if it is already in effect), is refreshable, and while it puts Klinklang at a ridiculous Speed level, it also powers up Gear Grind, as well as reducing its Energy Cost by 2. Other than that, Klinklang can support the team with Sandstorm, cripple fast opponents with Thunder Wave, reflect status moves with Magic Coat, and use the recoil part of Iron Defense to good effect, thanks to its high Speed. Klinklang can also use Recycle in tandem with Steel Gem to consistently let loose Gem-boosted STAB attacks, if you want a fun gimmick play to use.

With a Rare Candy slapped on, Klinklang gains a boost to its Defense Rank, and increases the BAP of its Steel Moves by 2. While this is nice, unless you really want the Defense Boost and take less damage from attacks, you are generally better off with putting on a Metal Coat or a Steel Gem, which will make Klinklang's Steel Attacks consistently hit for more damage than they will with Rare Candy.

Countering a Klinklang is not that difficult. Generally, strong Ground, Fire and Fighting moves will deplete its health quickly, which it cannot recover outside of Rest. Fire-Types tend to have a field day against Klinklang, who can usually wipe it out without too much trouble. This is made easier by the fact that Klinklang generally has no real answers to any Pokemon from these types. That said, Klinklang is generally a powerful Pokemon to utilise, and is very cheap to raise, but its main drawbacks lie in the inability to cover its weaknesses well. But do not underestimate this Pokemon, as it is capable of dealing lots of damage.

Other Notable Attacks:

Gravity: Gravity allows Gear Grind to hit 100% Accuracy, and Zap Cannon hits 80%, assuming you are not running a +Speed Nature. If your opponent is abusing Gravity, however, you can use this to cancel it out.

Autotomize: While Shift Gear increases Attack as well as Speed, Autotomize makes the Speed Boost permanent, whilst halving its Weight instead of boosting its attack. It does weaken Wild Charge, but it does result in less damage taken from Low Kick.

Trick Room: If you are using Trick Room, it is either to make Klinklang outspeed a faster foe (Which you have plenty of Speed Boosting moves to do), assist slower team-mates in making them faster, or negating it when your opponent is abusing it. Otherwise, Klinklang is just not slow enough to use this effectively.

Cool Combinations:

Bind + ViceGrip / Gear Grind: The first is a basic combination that boosts Bind to respectable levels with 10 BAP, as well as doubling the residual damage it deals to 4 DPA. The second is a more powerful attack (14 BAP) that while it does not deal as much damage per action, it does hit in two parts for pierce, and also receives STAB.

Discharge + Thunder Wave: A quick way to spread guaranteed paralysis to the whole field, just be careful of your own allies.

Thundershock + Thunderbolt / Thunder: A lightning powerful attack that utilizes Klinklang's Electric Coverage. The first has 19 BAP, and is more reliable than the second, but the second is more powerful with 22 BAP, and has a higher Paralysis rate. Discharge can also be used for spread damage in doubles, just be wary of your allies.

Krilowatt may be small, but it has the tools to fight any adversary it comes across. It was designed as a utility counter that could be tailored to beat any OU Pokemon, but not all of them at once. These traits show up well with its massive HP, decent speed, and all-around useful stats, with no massive strengths or glaring weaknesses. Krilowatt's abilities make it tough to wear down, with Magic Guard preventing residual damage and Shell Armor to block critical hits. Trace furthers Krilowatt's Defense by ofter allowing it to select immunity abilities an opponent possesses on moves they otherwise might use against Krilowatt.

Krilowatt's main tricks are its defenses and its damage returning abilities, Counter and Mirror Coat. Combined with its basic status array of Confuse Ray, Scald for burns, Toxic and Thunder Wave, Krilowatt can wear foes down much more quickly than they can attack it. It's also tiny and quick, so it's Dodge Command is very powerful, hitting the 50% CAP easily with +Spe. Krilowatt's offensive movepool actually isn't that expansive, containing mostly Electric, Water, Ice, and Ground moves along with a few physical Fighting attacks, Hidden Power, Payback, and Signal Beam. Krilowatt also has Copycat and Me First to copy a foe's strategies, with Aqua Jet and Ice Shard to provide priority. It's high speed and Dive allow it to evade slower opposing attacks, By far it's nastiest two action sequences are Mind Reader along with Guillotine and Sheer Cold, which are expensive but powerful attacks.

Krilowatt has a few nasty tricks, but its only methods of move denial are Imprison and Torment, meaning Taunt can quickly shut down many of its most effective defensive and offensive strategies. Stat-ups are also not recommended as Krilowatt is the only Pokemon outside Manaphy to get Heart Swap. Krilowatt also lacks any multi-hit attacks, so smashing it from behind a Substitute can diffuse it Counter and Mirror Coat strategies. If they can fend off Ice attacks, Grass types with Worry Seed can eliminate Krilowatt's Ability support and use its massive health as a syphon for their Draining attacks. All in all Krilowatt is an excellent singles Pokemon, but has few applications in multiple battles, it's sole team support moves are Helping Hand and Safeguard.

Rare Candy increases Krillowatt's Attack, which is helpful since most of its physical movepool consists of attacks that are weaker than their Special counterparts, and its low weight generally leaves Wild Charge lacking in power despite Magic Guard granting Krillowatt immunity to recoil.

Other Notable Attacks:

Recycle: allows Krilowatt to restore an item it has lost, be it an offensive item like a Gem or reliable Leftovers Recovery.

Volt Switch: It's less powerful than Krilowatt's other Electric attacks, but it can reset some bad status or effects like Perish Song in Switch=KO.

Whirlpool: Krilowatt's sole means of residual damage, which allows Krillowatt to get around opponents using Endure.

Cool Combinations:

Shock Wave + Zap Cannon: Krilowatt can do this too, to paralyze in case it gets Taunted.

Surf + Scald: Delivers a potential Burn status to all pokemon in a multi-battle, be careful, as it hits allies as well.

Lucario is notable for its impressive and fairly unique movepool and excellent typing, combining one of the best offensive types with one of the best defensive types. Its Abilities are useful but not overly so in Singles battles, but can shine in multiple battles where an effective immunity to flinch (plus a permanent speed boost when it would be flinched) and Justified's instant Attack raise on Beat Up can be very valuable.

Lucario is a mixed attacker through and through, with physical coverage of Fighting, Steel, Dark, Ground, and Rock with Blaze Kick, Ice Punch, Poison Jab, Shadow Claw, ThunderPunch, and Zen Headbutt to round out its physical movepool. It's special movepool has Fighting moves along with Dark Pulse, Dragon Pulse, Flash Cannon, Hidden Power, Psychic, and Shadow Ball. Lucario also has both Me First and Copycat, so be warned about using attacks your own Pokemon is weak to, Lucario can return them swiftly.

Lucario's tricks extend primarily to tactical advantages like Agility, Detect, Dig, Magnet Rise, and Quick Guard for evasive options along with Counter to return damage, Heal Pulse and Helping Hand to aid allies in doubles, Circle Throw and Roar to phaze opponents, and several stat-ups like Bulk Up, Calm Mind, Hone Claws, Iron Defense, Nasty Plot, Swords Dance, and Work Up. Drain Punch is Lucario's only means of healing itself, while Bullet Punch, Extremespeed, Feint, and Vacuum Wave give it plenty of priority. Dual Chop and Bone Rush are its only multi-hit moves.

In other words, Lucario is a classic "beat 'em up" Pokemon, relying on Extremespeed, Aura Sphere, Hi Jump Kick, and its slew of offensive coverage to win the day. Bringing a Pokemon that can outdamage it or shut it down is the best way to get rid of it, just be careful of Counter with Physical attackers.

Soothe Bell enhances Lucario's Physical and Special attacks, making it that much more dangerous to face in combat. While its STABs hit Rock and Ice redundantly, all of Lucario's coverage moves appreciate the boost.

Other Notable Attacks:

Foresight: A great deal of Lucario's best moves are Normal and Fighting type.

Mind Reader: Most of Lucario's attacks are fairly accurate, but Mind Reader ensures they will connect and helps it deal with evasive Pokemon.

Reversal: An immunity to Toxic and Sandstorm allows Lucario to function in several Low HP situations effectively and get the maximum value our of Reversal.

Cool Combinations:

Extremespeed + Bone Rush: One of the great advantages Bone Rush has over other Ground moves is that it isn't Seismic, meaning it can hit a great deal of Levitating Pokemon. In this case it can do so very quickly.

Feint / Extremespeed + Hi Jump Kick: A boffo way to trump opponents trying to Protect against HJK, just be aware that like most Feint combinations, it's Normal-type. For a Fighting version that doesn't break Protect, use Extremespeed.

Snore + Metal Sound / Screech: If you're going to be sent to sleep, there's no better way to retaliate than to use that sleeping turn to lower one of your opponent's defenses and deal some damage, STAB in Metal Sound's case.

To begin with, Machamp's stats are pretty solid. Little speed, but decent defenses and a fearsome Rank 5 attack. These attributes combined with Machamp's typing turn it into a pretty decent tank. Machamp's main STAB is of course its No Guard DynamicPunch, bound to confuse its foes or at least use up their substitutions. It has plenty of other STABs available though, many of which serve a unique and useful purpose or simply provide and alternative when the preferred move is unavailable. For coverage it has access to Dual Chop, the Elemental Punches, Payback and a variety of Rock and Ground moves. Bullet Punch is a decent priority move and can be easily combined with other punches. If all else fails, Bide and Counter can use the opponent’s attacks against them.

No Guard is a major selling point. As mentioned above, it boosts DynamicPunch to usable levels as well as allowing usually shaky Rock moves to hit consistently. Alternately, you can use it to go mixed with Focus Blast, Vacuum Wave, and Fire Blast. It also counters evasive strategies like Dig and Agility; however it also prevents it from using these strategies itself and makes it a magnet for low accuracy moves. Guts allows Machamp to absorb status effectively; even paralysis affects him little thanks to already low speed. No Guard will attract more dangerous sleep moves though; Sleep Talk can be used to get around this. Machamp even has a few little supportive tricks up its four sleeves. Encore and Swagger are quite disruptive while Light Screen and Wide Guard can shield Machamp and its allies.

Machamp even has a Signature Item it can use, the Link Cable, to raise its Attack and Special Defense (highest true stats) by one (1) Rank, making it an even more formidable foe. In general Machamp is well guarded by its combination of abilities and stats, so Skill Swap, Worry Seed, and Gastro Acid reduce its effectiveness. It's also quite susceptible to Dynamicpunch itself given that confusion doesn't activate Guts, but will cause Machamp to hurt itself for a decent amount of damage. Flinch moves are also very effective because of Machamp's low Speed and inability to dodge them. Be warned though, after a few boosts from Steadfast Machamp will be pretty quick, so be prepared to lower its Speed or resist its stats.

Other Notable Attacks:

Foresight: Ghost types are immune to Machamp’s fighting STABs, so Foresight can help to expand your options, especially against the likes of Sableye and Kitsunoh.

Smack Down: Many flying foes and levitators would be otherwise weak to your seismic moves; Smack Down allows you to capitalise on this.

Wake-Up Slap:It's a pretty nasty way to disrupt an opponent's Rest, especially considering Machamp's high Attack.

Vital Throw + Focus Punch: If you aren't going to get damaged, this combination has a lower priority than Counter, STAB, and a much more managable Energy Cost. It does more damage the heavier the opponent is to boot.

Metagross is a superb offensive and defensive Pokemon who benefits greatly from ASB's Weight and Ability mechanics. Although Light Metal cuts Metagross' Weight down to Class 6, Metagross is still significantly heavier than a lot of Pokemon, and in exchange it gains +1 priority on every attack with six (6) or less BAP. Considering that Metagross has several such attacks, most of them use its superb Attack stat, and it even gets Bullet Punch up to +2 Priority when used by itself, it's a fair trade. Clear Body of course prevents Metagross from being affected by stat-downs, which is still quite important.

Metagross distinguishes itself by having a multitude of support options backed by extremely powerful physical attacks. Gravity, Hone Claws, Light Screen, Magnet Rise, Reflect, Telekinesis, and Stealth Rock can all be used to Metagross or it's teammates' benefit. Metagross also benefits from the evasive maneuver Agility, which can protect it from many powerful special attacks it might not otherwise want to take. The core of Metagoss though will always be its powerful Steel, Fighting, Ground, and Rock type physical attacks, with Zen Headbutt, Aerial Ace, Ice Punch, Pursuit, and ThunderPunch playing backup. Metagross' special movepool should not be ignored, with its combination of Psychic attacks and Flash Cannon, Grass Knot, Shadow Ball, Signal Beam, and Sludge Bomb. When it's getting down to the wire, Metagross can end the battle with a very powerful Explosion off its Rank 5 Attack.

Metagross' physical defense is formidable, and combined with Magnet Rise to evade most Ground attacks, Metagross' lack of weaknesses can make it extremely difficult to take down. Even under Gravity where its Ground weakness can be fully exploited nothing is safe, as Metagross benefits greatly from the accuracy increase to its many powerful attacks, not to mention the immense benefit it gets from priority Bulldoze in Gravity to cut an opponent's Speed down to size. Fortunately Metagross possesses neither Taunt, nor multi-hit moves, nor counterattacks, nor any means of recovery outside of Rest, so once it gets damaged, it stays damaged. It still hits very hard and is difficult to take down without an equally powerful physical Pokemon or a special attacker with fire moves. Burn in general is effective at limiting Metagross' damage potential.

Rare Candy strengthens Metagross's already excellent offensive ability and provides an extra punch to Metagross's Meteor Mash and Bullet Punch, as well as its Zen Headbutt. Because Metagross largely sticks to physical attacks, the power boost is welcome.

Other Notable Attacks:

Block: Block punishes evasion, and even with Light Metal still does 12 damage to any evasive foe.

Gyro Ball: Metagross isn't that slow initially, but after mutliple uses of Hammer Arm, this can become Metagross' best Steel STAB.

Iron Defense: If used the same action before Metagross is hit by a contact attack, the Pokemon hitting Metagross will suffer recoil damage. Considering Metagross has Agility and Rock Polish to boost speed, this is quite plausible.

Rain Dance: Reduces the ability of Fire Pokemon to damage Metagross, but since Metagross has no way to lock weather down, this is usually a temporary solution. Metagross also isn't particularly fond of most Water attacks, as they tend to be Special-based, and it particularly doesn't like Scald.

Cool Combinations:

Aerial Ace + Dynamicpunch / Meteor Mash: This attack packs a punch, and gets rid of the Accuracy issue of both attacks.

While Mismagius seems to live in Gengar's shadow, it's very capable of surviving on its own, and manages this with a great bag of tricks including Taunt, Torment, Disable, Magic Room, Perish Song,Will-o-Wisp, and Wonder Room. Mismagius has Thunder Wave, Imprison, and Heal Bell, with Hex to damage after statusing the opponent. Snatch and Magic Coat help it avoid the set-up of opposing Pokemon and gives it more freedom to status foes. Magismagius can also boost its own Special Attack with Nasty Plot and go on the offensive. In general Mismagius' status repertoire is larger than Gengar's, and it's not as susceptible Psychic attacks or Ground attacks if knocked down. The biggest distinguishing features are Magic Coat, her ability to paralyze foes instead of using sleep, and a much more special-attack oriented focus.

While her coverage is limited to Ghost, Electric, Grass, Psychic, Dark, Inferno, Power Gem, and Hidden Power, it's enough to outdamage your opponent thanks to her vast array of status, and even after taking a few hits Pain Split is enough to get it back at good health.

Dusk Stone gives Mismagius an edge against opposing Special attackers, boosting its own Special Attack and Special Defense to Rank 5 while powering up Mismagius's array of Ghost and Dark- typed attacks, the most interesting of which may just be Foul Play, which can turn the tables of high Atk Ranking Pokemon against them.

Other Notable Attacks:

Heal Bell: Great for team support, fits very nicely with uproar if you're taunted, and great to remove status like paralysis or poison, plus it makes hex do half damage

Screech: Mismagius' own physical movepool is not large, but does contain a few unique options like Aerial Ace. Screech and also be used in a combination with Snore for a special Normal-typed attack Mismagius can use if she gets put to sleep.

Cool Combinations:

Astonish + Shadow Sneak / Sucker Punch / Uproar: A fast combination, very useful to finish up a faster foe (hitting ghosts SE) and another one that helps you waking up everyone on the field while not leving you trapped into Uproar, very useful if one of your partners is asleep or will soon be.

Shock Wave + Zap Cannon: As an evolution of a GSC generation Pokemon, Mismagius is one of the few Generation 4 Pokemon to be able to access this powerful paralyzing combination.

Swift + Inferno: An attack out of this Dream World, it provides a perfect accuracy 100% burn and a high-powered Fire attack for Mismagius that hits all opponents in a multi-battle, excellent for getting a burn around Taunt. If you just want a single-target attack, use with Magical Leaf instead of Swift. Either will hit an opponent trying to evade.

Nidoking looks average at first, but plays as anything but. With an immense movepool containing coverage from basically every single type (but not one of each for physical and special attacks), Nidoking has an attack for every situation. Sheer Force greatly increases the power of much of its Special movepool, while Rivalry makes it even stronger against foes of the same gender. It loses power against female foes, so be wary. It's most notable high-powered attacks are Earthquake, Gunk Shot, Aqua Tail, Head Smash, Megahorn, and Superpower on the physical side and Earth Power, Sludge Wave, Blizzard, Dragon Pulse, Fire Blast, Focus Blast, Surf, and Thunder on the special side. With Dig for evasion and Sucker Punch for priority, Nidoking can be hard to pin down.

Nidoking's support movepool is expressed through hazards like Stealth Rock and Toxic Spikes as well as Disable, Dragon Tail, Reflect, Roar, Taunt, and Torment. Bide and Counter can send attacks back to their user, while Focus Energy gives Nidoking's varied attacks even more offensive power by enabling critical hits.

Nidoking is perhaps the oddest full beneficiary of Moon Stone, getting a great deal of benefit from some of its less direct effects. The lack of recoil does wonders for the viability of Head Smash, while the increase in Normal BAP boosts Double-Edge. The Psychic boost aids its lone Psychic move, Confusion.

Nidoking has a great deal of offense, but its defenses are only statistically average. Female Pokemon can use Rivalry against it, but Nidoking's encourage assure that gender alone is not sufficient to stop it. With limited vulnerability to status and hazards, the best approach is direct attacks.

Other Notable Attacks:

Drill Run: While not as powerful as Earthquake, Drill Run can strike Levitating opponents, a useful attribute since many Pokemon with Levitate are otherwise weak to Ground, and some are dangerous enough not to bother with trying Smack Down.

Super Fang / Seismic Toss: Although Nidoking has expansive attack options, particularly powerful or defensive foes can be better damaged initially by Super Fang, which can be followed up later be Seismic Toss.

Aerial Ace + Dynamicpunch: A common combo that brings some accuracy to Dynamicpunch and a little power boost. Good if you need to confuse a foe quickly.

Avalanche + Body Slam: An attack that combines the best of Nidoking's abilities, slow enough to bypass Counter, gaining either a Sheer Force boost if active, or having a 30% chance to paralyze, as well as Ice-typing.

Fury Attack + Drill Run / Megahorn / Peck: A substitute busting combination of either the Ground, Bug, or Flying type. The Peck combination always calculates at 5 hits. Combined with Focus Energy, it can load up lots of damage.

Porygon-Z is one of the best special attackers in existence, with 3 abilities that augment its offensive presence. Its mid-ranged Speed allow it to play around opponents, but its true power comes from the lower priority of its combinations enabling Analytic to work effectively. Combined with a proper Download boost and Adaptability, Porygon-Z has all its angles covered on damage.

The first thing to notice about Porygon-Z is its special coverage, which includes Normal, Electric, Ice, and Psychic attacks along with Dark Pulse, Hidden Power, Signal Beam, Shadow Ball, and Solarbeam. In contrast its physical attacks are quite limited, consisting almost entirely of Normal moves, along with Aerial Ace, Iron Tail, Thief, and Zen Headbutt. Where Porygon-Z distinguishes itself is its support movepool, which gets Agility for evasive maneuvers, Magic Coat to reflect bad status, Magnet Rise to avoid Seismic attacks, Pain Split and Recover to heal damage, Conversion and Conversion 2 to change its type (and thus Adaptability boosted attack), as well as stat-ups in Sharpen and Nasty Plot. Thunder Wave can status faster foes, while Gravity , Reflect, Trick Room, and Wonder Room can effect the field condition. Finally Porygon-Z does have access to Bide, so be very wary of attacking it all-out.

There's no denying Porygon-Z is a formidable attacker, but it's heavily reliant on its abilities. Removing those cuts out a lot of its power, and Taunt prevents it from changing type with one of its Conversions. Additionally, phazing moves will reset its type to Normal and its Stats, and those moves have lower priority than most of its combinations trying to get an Analytic boost. Porygon-Z's defenses are only average, so although it won't go down easily, it will go down eventually. Since its Conversions to get type advantage can take up some time and are somewhat random, a well-timed Focus Punch or combination can take advantage of the break in attacking. Chance Substitutions are particularly helpful in taking Porygon-Z down.

Other Notable Attacks:

Lock-On: Most of Porygon-Z's attacks are accurate or can be combined as such, but this does help it skirt evasion or evasive action with a combination next action.

Recycle: Porygon-Z can recover its Dubious Disk from a lost data stream, or other items, but unfortunately it can't get boosts back unless it switches out.

Teleport: The self-phazing effect can get Porygon-Z won't restore it's Download boosts, but it will get it out of an opposing Perish Song or a trapping move, it can also serve in Agility's place if Agility is disabled.

Cool Combinations:

Hyper Beam + Charge Beam / Dark Pulse / Ice Beam / Psybeam / Shadow Ball / Signal Beam / Tri Attack: Fire off one of these combos if it matches your type, and Analytic will take care of the rest. Part of what makes Porygon-Z so dangerous.

Psychic + Psyshock: With a huge Rank 5 SpA, Porygon-Z's Psychic can hit all but the heaviest of foes (WC 8 or higher). Most of those have much better Defense than Special Defense anyway, but for those that don't, this combination can inflict quite a bit of damage.

Shock Wave + Zap Cannon: Since Porygon-Z is so dependent on combinations, being able to paralyze foes while taunted is highly useful, so of course Porygon-Z will use this common combination.

Snore + Uproar: If Porygon-Z is put to sleep, this combination will quickly wake it, and anything else, up, as well as do exceptional damage with 17 initial BAP.

Porygon2 distinguishes itself from Porygon-Z by being on the whole much more defensive, and by having a plethora of useful equip items. Eviolite boosts Porygon2's defenses to 100 / 5 / 5, which is extremely sturdy, while Up-Grade makes Porygon2 a much greater threat that can sustain its Trace Abilities longer. Porygon2 is also smaller than Porygon-Z and so its initial Dodge Command rate is 40. Where Porygon-Z can power through opponents, Porygon2 takes a more balanced approach.

Porygon2's special coverage includes Normal, Electric, Ice, and Psychic attacks along with, Hidden Power, Signal Beam, Shadow Ball, and Solarbeam. In contrast its physical attacks are quite limited, consisting almost entirely of Normal moves, along with Aerial Ace, Iron Tail, Thief and Zen Headbutt. For support it gets Recycle and Trick to maintain its boosting item. Agility for evasive maneuvers, Magic Coat to reflect bad status, Magnet Rise to avoid Seismic attacks, Pain Split and Recover to heal damage, Conversion and Conversion 2 to change its type, and thus aid its effective bulk. Thunder Wave can status faster foes, while Gravity , Reflect, Trick Room, and Wonder Room can effect the field condition. Finally Porygon2 does have access to Bide, so be very wary of attacking it all-out.

Porygon2 is much more difficult to pin down because of Trace, which allows it to use immunity abilities against their holders and in general provide Porygon2 additional and variable protection. It's low Speed means it will often get an Analytic boost without using a combination, and because of its synergy with Eviolite it can use Curse to lower its speed, increase its defense, and boost its offense through Analytic all at once, especially for its limited but almost entirely STAB boosted physical movepool. Fighting-types are recommended not only because they hit for STAB super-effective damage, but because their usual array of abilities are the least likely to backfire should Porygon2 choose to Trace one of them. In general Porygon2 is more solid and defensive than its evolved counterpart, making it more susceptible to Toxic and fixed damage attacks to blunt its defenses. It can also be Taunted first much more often, so use that to your advantage. Pokemon with Embargo and Magic Room are also very effective, as they can render both Trick and Recycle moot.

Other Notable Attacks:

Rest: Although it leaves Porygon2 vulnerable, it rids it of status and recovers more per damage than fixed damage attacks can inflict.

Last Resort: Porygon2's defensiveness and STAB allow it to use its versatility to use a large number of different attacks in a battle, increasing Last Resort's efectiveness each time.

Cool Combinations:

Discharge + Flash: With the ability to paralyze foes and lower their accuracy, as well as an Analytic boost, this is an excellent tool in doubles for the defensive Porygon2, just be careful of your partner, you'll lower their accuracy too.

Hyper Beam + Charge Beam / Ice Beam / Psybeam / Shadow Ball / Signal Beam / Tri Attack: A strong offensive combination that will trigger analytic. Porygon2's greater defense gives it a little more leeway for attacks, and choosing one of these with a weaker attack you ordinarily wouldn't use can power up Last Resort.

Pyroak's main selling points are its incredible bulk combined with a unique STAB combination and abilities that maximize its offensive and defensive capabilities. Its significant weight along with Rock Head backed Flare Blitz and Wood Hammer gives its physical attacks decisively more power than it looks like on paper while preserving Pyroak's high HP. Battle Armor prevents Pyroak from taking critical hits from anything but Mold Breaker Pokemon, meaning it gets the full effect from Screens and is must be taken down bit by bit. Finally, Chlorophyll makes it an immense threat in sunlight, boosting many of its relevant physical and special attacks, as well as patching up its poor Speed.

Pyroak's balanced 3 / 3 Offenses make its mixed movepool equally accessible, and it has quite a few attacks in both categories worth mentioning. Its physical and coverage include Fire, Grass, Fighting, Ground, and Rock attacks, with a few outlying moves like Dragonbreath, Iron Tail, Psybeam, Zap Cannon and of course Hidden Power. Pyroak's Special Movepool is a little more diverse than its physical movepool, but it generally has more useful Physical attacks past its STABs. For support, Pyroak has Dragon Tail and Roar to phaze opponents, Block to punish evasion, Aromatherapy, Light Screen, Safeguard, and defensive stat-boosters in Amnesia and Iron Defense, Stealth Rock as a hazard, Will-o-Wisp for Status, Leech Seed and Synthesis for recovery, and Worry Seed to nullify opposing abilities. Swords Dance can be used in every weather, though Growth is particularly effective in Sun. Finally, Pyroak can use Counter against physical attacks.

Pyroak does very well in Sun, but is decisively poor in Rain. Since it can't Taunt opponents, the best thing you can do to Pyroak is try and engage it while it's Taunted in the Rain, where its Fire STAB is blunted and it can't effectively use Solarbeam or any of its other Sun-based moves effectively. It's also neutral to both Fire and Water attacks, so blasting it with water in Rain is quite effective. Do be careful though, its Fire/Grass coverage is still quite potent, and it's bulk makes it quite able to tank even in unfavorable conditions. Flying and Poison types may be the best kind to take Pyroak on, considering they are neutral or resist a STAB and can hit for super-effective damage. Rock types, sadly, are weak to its Grass attacks so they must be very careful.

Rare Candy gives Pyroak a small offensive and defensive boost, enhancing the power of its two STAB attacks slightly and raising its Defense. Given the synergy of its STAB attacks the small boost is appreciated, for both its physical and special movepools.

Other Notable Attacks:

Bullet Seed: It's nowhere near as powerful as Wood Hammer, but it is Pyroak's only multi-hit attack.

Sweet Scent: Several of Pyroak's Special moves have imperfect accuracy, and Sweet Scent can patch that up against opponents for a brief time.

Water Sport: Pyroak can reduce the effectiveness of neutral Fire attacks against it with this attack, highly useful against other Fire types during Sun.

Cool Combinations:

Fire Spin + Leaf Tornado: Adding flames to Leaf Tornado gives Pyroak a Grass-type trapping move that can also lower a foe's Accuracy. The move itself is a bit inaccurate, but it's a good way to prevent switches and trap foes resistant or immune to Fire attacks.

Flame Burst + Inferno: After lowering a foes evasion with Sweet Scent, this combination can strike one foe for serious damage and also burn its nearby allies with a splash damage burn effect.

Heat Wave + Bullet Seed: Put those arm cannons to good use with this mult-hit attack that hits all opponents with burning seeds.

Revenankh is an excellent Pokemon for leveling the playing field against weather, removing it with Air Lock. It is generally resistant to status through Shed Skin, and Inflitrator allows it to bypass Safeguard and Screens. Revenankh is thus an ideal Pokemon to take on a variety of challenges and fares well in almost any arena. Its unique typing gives it unresisted Ghost and Fighting STAB attack combination, augmented by coverage through Ground, Normal, and Rock attacks along with Dual Chop, Poison Jab, Power Whip, and Ice Punch for physical coverage. It's special moves are much less varied, consisting only of Ghost, Fighting, and Normal attacks along with Ancientpower, Hidden Power and Psychic. Revenakh has access to priority with Mach Punch, Shadow Sneak, Sucker Punch, and Vacuum Wave. Bide and Counter aid Revenankh in returning damage from attacks.

For recovery, Revenankh has Drain Punch, Moonlight, and Pain Split, and can support allies with Glare, Helping Hand, Safeguard, Taunt, Telekinesis, Torment, Trick and Wide Guard. Revenankh can hold its own fairly well in battles, but Flying types are the best at taking it down. It has a few stat-ups in Bulk Up, Nasty Plot, and Work Up, but it mostly sticks to direct attacking.

Everstone increases Revenankh's Special Defense and buffs up its STAB combination, making it a very effect item to enhance offense and defense. Revenankh is already very solid and benefits more generally from Leftovers since Shed Skin and Air Lock reduce the effectiveness of many kinds of residual damage.

Other Notable Attacks:

Sand Tomb: Revenankh has multiple residual damage attacks, but Sand Tomb's status as a non-Seismic Ground attack lets it hit many foes for super-effective damage in addition to the trapping effect.

Punishment: While Revenakh's Ghost STAB is usually more powerful, Punishment can be very helpful against opponents employing a stat-up strategy.

Cool Combinations:

Arm Thrust + Revenge: A slow combination that can spillover through Substitutes and avoid Counter.

Force Palm + Mach Punch: a swift attack that can spread paralysis and possibly cost a foe an action.

Glare + Mean Look: This combination traps a foe, but also ensures paralysis the next action as well as 25% paralysis rate.

Roserade is one the foremost users of a potent strategy in ASB: Status Abuse. While status may be seen as rather hit-or-miss in terms of effectiveness in the cartridge games, ASB's feature of allowing multiple statuses to stack makes the many Grass type Pokemon with Sleep Powder, Stun Spore and Toxic much more effective. Roserade is set apart from many other status abusers by its speed. Though not the fastest Pokemon ever, it is actually the second fastest Pokemon with access to both Sleep Powder and Stun Spore (tying with Venomoth.) This boost not only translates into allowing it to status an opponent before they can react, but also increases the normally low accuracy of Stun Spore and Sleep Powder. Roserade itself is also resistant to status through Natural Cure.

Roserade is also capable of hazard support, being able to lay down both Spikes and Toxic Spikes to the benefit of its allies in either longer battles or switch battles. Roserade has excellent recovery options in Aromatherapy, Ingrain (useful in non-Switch battles), Leech Seed, Mega Drain (9 BAP with Technician), and Synthesis. Roserade uses her un-boosted rank 5 Special Attack and Technician to deal out some massive damage with help from her high-BP STAB moves like Leaf Storm, Magical Leaf, Petal Dance, Sludge Bomb, and Solarbeam, with Venoshock for poisoned foes. Coverage moves consist mainly of Extrasensory, Hidden Power (9 BAP with Technician), Shadow Ball and Weather Ball; a motley crew that is able to hit just enough types super-effectively so as to allow her to be a threat to many opponents.

Shiny Stone makes Roserade's special attacks even more threatening, and also patches up the accuracy of some of its more suspect moves, grating it for example a 100% accurate Leaf Storm and Toxic, 95% Accurate Pin Missile to use in combinations, and 85% Accurate Stun Spore and Sleep Powder.

Other Notable Attacks:

Swords Dance: Roserade's physical movepool is not large, but much of it is boosted by Technician, and Roserade itself still has Rank 3 Attack. It's quite useful against Specially Defensive Pokemon, and it's noteworthy that Roserade's Natural Gift can use 6 BAP Berries and get a boost there as well.

Water Sport: Water Sport temporarily nulls out Roserade's Fire weakness and in doubles or higher battles gives the whole team an inexpensive Fire resistance.

Worry Seed: Making an opponent lose its abilities is very useful against some foes, especially ones particularly reliant on their abilities to execute their strategy.

Cool Combinations:

Magical Leaf / Razor Leaf + Leaf Storm: A powerful grass attack that won't miss (in the case of Magical Leaf) or will do split physical/special damage and hit all opponents in a doubles or greater battle (Razor Leaf).

Poison Sting + Pin Missile: A surprisingly powerful Poison-type physical attack, because the initial hit has only 6 BAP and is thus eligible for Technician. The combination always hits all 5 times, resulting in a total BAP of 21 (9 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3). Each hit also has a Critical Hit chance, and a 30% chance to Poison.

Weather Ball + Sunny Day/Rain Dance: A combination that not only allows you to set up weather through Taunt, but also gives Roserade access to a Fire or Water move without using up Hidden Power.

Salamence hits like a truck with both physical and special attacks, and is decisively the most offensive of all the widely available Dragon types. With the exception of staples like Double Team, Endure, Toxic, Sleep Talk, and Substitute along with Defog, Dragon Dance, Hone Claws, Iron Defense, Roar and Tailwind, Salamence's entire being cries out to strike you with high BAP attacks backed by strong offensive stats.

Physically, those moves include Dragon, Flying, Dark, Ground, Rock, and Steel attacks along with Aqua Tail, Brick Break, Fire Fang, Shadow Claw, Thunder Fang, and Zen Headbutt. Special attacks cover Dragon and Fire moves along with Air Cutter, Hydro Pump, and Ominous Wind. Now, this may not seem like a lot, but it does have a ton of super-effective coverage, and in ASB a lot of what matters is how a Pokemon can combine attacks, not just what it has on paper. Salamence's huge offenses and Moxie make it a perfect mid-battle Pokemon, picking off a foe and steamrolling the next one with boosted offense. Salamence can also Fly as an evasive action that does significant damage when it comes back down, and has Roost and Wish to heal any damage it takes. Dragon Tail does damage and can phaze foes.

Salamence has a lot of incredibly powerful attacks and good abilities, but it lacks a lot of the tactical options available to other Pokemon. It can't limit opposing attack options, has no multi-hit move, and almost all of its status options are chance-based. It also has a glaring weakness to Ice Attacks, which displays itself most prominent against Ice Shard and Icicle Spear. Provided your Substitute can survive one of its attacks, it's a good way to limit it damage. It isn't easy though, Salamence is strong enough that it can just hit the Outrage button, and if you aren't a Steel type or have high defense, it's quite easy for it to roll right over you with sheer offensive force. Salamence does not go down quietly.

Rare Candy boosts Salamence's Dragon attacks even further, especially its Outrage. The additional Attack makes many of its strongest moves that much more threatening, and even the small boost to Flying attacks makes those that much more effective.

Other Notable Attacks:

Body Slam: Salamence is pretty hefty, so although it isn't as powerful generally as its Dragon attacks, it still hits for decent damage and can paralyze.

Draco Meteor: Salamence has enough physical attacks that it should be able to last out a -2 SpA drop from Draco Meteor easily. It's a very powerful first action attack that will start rising back up at the end of the current round.

Iron Defense: Salamence is actually fast enough to pull off an Iron Defense before an opponent hits with a contact move, and cause it to do recoil damage to itself the same action. Not only that, combined with Intimidate it makes Salamence a fairly good physically defensive Pokemon.

Scary Face: Salamence doesn't have reliable paralysis, but Scary Face can bring faster opponents easily down to Salamence's level (and often much lower)

Cool Combinations:

Aerial Ace + Double-Edge /: If you've ever wondered what it would be like if Salamence had Brave Bird, worry no longer. By throwing its weight behind this attack Salamence can do massive physical Flying damage.

Aqua Tail / Iron Tail + Dragon Tail Physical Water or Steel damage with phasing, slow enough to hit after Counter. Quite useful against opponents that like to SPAM those attacks.

Ember + Heat Wave: One of the few Pokemon that can use this and doesn't have STAB. This brings the combination to 19 BAP, and much more cost-effective than versions using a higher Fire-attack to combine it with.

Twister + Rain Dance: Salamence actually does have spread Fire attacks in Heat Wave, but it doesn't have spread Water attacks. This is expensive, but an effective way to change weather and hit opponents for Water damage.

Scizor is popular in ASB for many of the same reasons it's popular in OU: It has an almost perfectly synergistic combination of stats and abilities, and it can do massive damage with its Technician boosted physical attacks. Technician and Light Metal are particularly synergistic, with Technician raising Scizor's weakest attacks from 4 to 6 BAP, and Light Metal giving all 6 BAP or lesser attacks additional priority. Scizor thus, despite its low Speed, tends to hit fast and hard with a lot of low-energy tactical attacks, a strategy perfectly suited to the game mechanics.

Scizor's actual movepool itself is pretty limited, with its physical attack coverage consisting of Bug, Steel, Dark, Flying, Fighting, and Normal attacks. It has decent coverage, but it can't get a super-effective hit on everything like some Pokemon. It's Special attack is low and doesn't have many options, though what it does have tends to be boosted by Technician. Bug Buzz, Silver Wind, Struggle Bug, Flash Cannon, Air Slash, Hidden Power, Hyper Beam, Ominous Wind, Razor Wind, Swift, Vacuum Wave, and Venoshock make up the relevant list. Several are boosted by Technician, others have different useful qualities like Razor Wind. Otherwise the moves to watch out for are Bullet Punch, Feint, Rock Smash, Quick Attack, and Vacuum Wave, which get a Technician Boost and a Light Metal boost raising them all to 6BAP and an additional priority level (0 -> 1 -> 2 -> 3) used alone, and then Bug Bite, Iron Head, Aerial Ace, and Brick Break. Double Hit is Scizor's sole multi-hit move and valuable in combinations. Scizor has Bide and Counter to return damage, and team support in Light Screen, Safeguard, and Tailwind. It can heal off damage with Roost or Morning Sun, evade or stat-up with Agility, which it can combine with Iron Defense and / or Swords Dance and Baton Pass to aid allies. Scizor punishes attempts to evade with its powerful Pursuit. At low HP, Scizor's Swarm activates, bringing up the power of its Bug attacks and making Reversal a much more considerable threat.

Scizor is powerful and it attacks quickly, but aside from its few useful support moves, it has no attack option reduction, and is very susceptible to Burn. It is also heavily reliant on its abilities, and without Technician its list of powerful attacks is not long. Poison types with Acid and Gastro Acid actually fare quite well against it, because aside from Hidden Power, Scizor has no Ground or Psychic coverage to address them. Worry Seed users don't have to get around its initial poison immunity, but they do have to watch out for its powerful STAB Bug attacks. In general Scizor has few or no viable answers to Special Fire attacks, so aim those at it and you should be victorious.

Metal Coat improves Scizor's already decent Defense and gives it a slight boost to its damage on Steel-type attacks, the fixed damage providing a mitigating effect primarily against Pokemon resistant to them.

Knock Off / Thief: In Item battles, Knock Off gets a Technican boost and a priority boost, so it's not even a bad attack to start with. If your Scizor has no item and the opponent's is valuable, Thief is even better.

Rain Dance: Helps with the Fire weakness significantly, although it's not as powerful as the effect in-game. Scizor doesn't like boosted special Water attacks much either, as it can't hit most Bulky Waters effectively either.

Cool Combinations:

Bullet Punch + Double Hit: Scizor's fastest Sub-breaking combination, having 6 or less initial BAP gives it a Technician boost giving it 9 BAP on the first hit and 6 on the second, for a total of 15 BAP with +1 priority and STAB.

Cut + Night Slash / X-Scissor: A guaranteed CH either on a Ghost opponent or STAB is basic, but effective if Brick Break would not be on that particular opponent.

Wing Attack + Ominous Wind: This quick combination gives Scizor a Ghost-type split Physical and Special move with 15 BAP that has a chance to raise all of it's stats. As similar as Ghost and Dark coverage are, the dual nature of the attack can capitalize on the imbalanced nature of Scizor's offenses and many opponent's defenses.

Scolipede is fairly unique in that it is a very large Pokemon that also has a very high speed, something usually seen only among Legendary Pokemon. Although its defenses are below average at 90 HP / 3 / 3 it has a decent defensive typing and thus can Bodyblock for a lot of Pokemon. Its massive size also means its Dig attack can hit levitating Pokemon and its Steamroller starts with fourteen (14) BAP before taking into account its opponent's size. Scolipede's abilities are also quite helpful, as it can deactivate Poison Point to give its poison attacks a Toxic chance, its Bug attacks get a boost when it reaches 30 or less HP, and if it is hit by Status it gets faster.

For all its size though, Scolipede is a mediocre attacker, although its physical coverage is not bad with Bug, Poison, Dark, Ground, Normal, Rock, and Steel coverage along with Aqua Tail and Superpower. It's special movepool is limited entirely to Bug, Poison, and Normal moves along with Hidden Power and Solarbeam.

Scolipede can also set up the field in longer battles with Spikes and Toxic Spikes, but otherwise its limited primarily to boosting itself with Agility (which can also be used evasively), Defense Curl, Iron Defense, and Swords Dance, it can steal other boosts with Snatch as well as pass them off with Baton Pass. Its Pursuit can punish opponent's attempts to evade it. Its lower initial HP makes it a great user of Endeavor.

Scolipede is pretty good at throwing its Weight around, but it can generally be overcome by fast, strong super-effective attacks. Since its Steamroller can flinch and paralysis only activates its Quick Feet, lowering its speed through Stat Drops is often the quickest way to getting a speed advantage, and after that high Base Attack Power attacks can usually wear it down faster that it can deal damage.

Rare Candy fixes Scolipede's offense problem in a big way, giving it a huge boost in Attack and further strengthening its Bug and Poison STABs. Combined with its great deal of physical coverage, Scolipede is one of the item's greatest beneficiaries.

Other Notable Attacks:

Bulldoze: Given Scolipede's ability to flinch with Steamroller, Bulldoze can level the playing field in speed wars.

Iron Defense: Though mentioned as a booster above, Iron Defense has another ASB specific quality in that it causes 25% recoil damage to a Pokemon using a contact attack against the Pokemon if it uses it after Iron Defense in the same action. As one of the fastest Pokemon with Iron Defense, Scolipede can take advantage of this.

Venoshock: While Scolipede's Attack is its primary form of attack, all of its poisonous attacks along with Poison Point make it highly likely it can wear opponents down, and once poisoned Venoshock's high Base Attack Power can take them down much more easily.

Cool Combinations:

Megahorn + Twineedle: A piercing 18 BAP Bug-type attack with a Poison chance (Toxic if Poison Point Ability is set to Disabled).

Pin Missile + Poison Sting: A low energy combination that is nonetheless very effective, by hitting 5 times and piercing the opponent's Substitute for a total of 14 BAP Poison-type attack with 5 distinct 30% Poison chances (Toxic Poison if Poison Point is set on disabled.)

Poison Tail + Aqua Tail / Iron Tail: A power boosting combination that brings the combination up to 19 BAP Water type for Aqua Tail and 20 BAP Steel type for Iron Tail, plus the high CH chance and Poison chance.

Steamroller + Double-Edge / Giga Impact / Payback: As a Pokemon with both high Height and Weight, this combination packs a heavyweight punch, starting at 14 BAP for Steamroller adding 14/16 for Double-Edge / Giga Impact. With the average (Size 3) Pokemon reducing Steamroller to 11 BAP, the total BAP with STAB is 28/30. Ouch. Payback can be used to add a Dark typing (total initial BAP 24.) and will go second in a combination, which is helpful against Ghost types that resist Scolipede's STABs.

Possessing great bulk and mediocre initial offense, Scrafty is a durable Pokemon with a great neutral STAB combination and a diverse array of physical attacks to strike its opponents. Its abilities are excellent, with Shed Skin to safeguard against status, Moxie to increase its offensive ability after a KO, and Intimidate to bring its physical defensive ability even higher.

Scrafty's physical movepool consists of Dark, Fighting, Dragon, Normal, and Rock attacks along with Dig, Fire Punch, Ice Punch, Iron Head, Poison Jab, ThunderPunch, and Zen Headbutt. It's special movepool is more limited with Dark moves, Focus Blast, Dragon Pulse, Grass Knot, Hidden Power, Hyper Beam, and Sludge Bomb as its relevant entries. Scrafty can Counter incoming physical attacks. Drain Punch and Rest are its sole means of healing. Super Fang can take particularly bulky foes and wear them down more quickly at the start of a match.

Scrafty's support movepool is limited, with Dragon Tail, Fake Out, Roar, Taunt, and Toxic being the only moves that really qualify. Scrafty's much more of an attacking style Pokemon with Amnesia, Bulk Up, Dragon Dance and Work Up as its stat boosters.

Scrafty is fairly bulky and very versatile, but its primarily a physical attacker so Pokemon with high physical defense can ward it off. Although many of those have a weakness to Fighting, Part Steel and Part Rock types that don't provide generally better matchups, along with Flying and opposing Fighting types that can outdamage Scrafty.

Rare Candy gives Scrafty an even further boost to its defenses, and also increases the power of its strong neutral STAB attacks, providing Scrafty an excellent buffer for its set-up and sweep kind of strategy. The additional power boost is especially apprciated on Scrafty's mediocre initial attack stat.

Other Notable Attacks:

Foul Play: Scrafty's Attack is fairly mediocre, but it does get STAB on Foul Play and can use it well against foes with high Atk that are neutral to Dark.

Low Sweep: Scrafty's low speed can make it difficult to keep up with foes, Low Sweep does decent damage and lowers the foe's speed.

Scary Face: Scrafty can't utilize paralysis well, so Scary Face is often enough to drop a foe's Speed down to Scrafty's level.

Cool Combinations:

Drain Punch + Dual Chop: A way to drain HP through a Substitute, if you can break it.

Focus Punch + Drain Punch / Fire Punch / Ice Punch / ThunderPunch: A risky move, but if you can pull it off behind a Substitute, you can put a lot of power behind that elemental attack.

Slowbro's title as Bulky Water is well deserved, very nice typing with important ressistances to Fire, Ice and Fighting type attacks, and reliable recovery in Slack off and Regenerator, which combined with it's great Fire, Fighting, Ice, and Ground coverage in adition to many of your Water and Psychic options, and a great support movepool with Light Screen, Reflect, Safeguard, Thunder Wave, Disable, Yawn, and Trick Room, with Bide, Teleport and Counter to help itself against unbalanced matchups

While its speed is among the lowest is ASB, this can be remedied by the use of Trick Room, which also makes Dive and Dig fast evasive attacks (and that even at normal speed help avoiding many powerful combinations). Slowbro's niche as a physically defensive Psychic Pokemon can be very useful against opposing Dark-types, as Slowbro can take their stronger physical attacks and used the aforementioned Bide and Counter to send them back. What differentiates Slowbro from Slowking is slightly different attack access, with Slowbro having unique TMs like Submission and Aerial Ace. Otherwise the primary differences are stat allocation and Slowking's slightly broader Special movepool and Nasty Plot.

Rare Candy is Slowbro's boosting item, giving it an increase in Defense and a small boost to its Water and Psychic STABs, helping it equally with both physical and special attacks. Since most powerful Bug-type and Dark-type attacks are physical, it also gives Slowbro some more protection.

Other Notable Attacks:

Magic Coat: Slowbro's speed is it's only bad stat, which makes it very vulnerable to virtually every Taunter (and sleep inducer) in the game being faster than you, making your amazing support useless, so bouncing it right back at them it's an incredible tool

Me First: Under Trick room you're faster than almost every poke in ASB, and by being week to Ghost attacks you're able to return them right back at them for some SE damage

Gravity: A very nice tool to make innacurate-but-powerful attacks such as Focus Blast, Zap Cannon and Blizzard into more acurate versions of themselves, and to make your Earthquake and Dig always hit regardless of the opponent

Cool Combinations:

Aerial Ace + Dynamicpunch / Mega Kick: Something that Slowking will never be able to do, patching the moves mediocre accuracy making them hit all the time, the first causing confusion, while the second gives you a powerful flying attack to hit those Grass & Bug pokemon.

Brine + Surf: A deadly combination in Doubles and Triples, best used mid & late-battle when everyone's hp is reduced this attack has the potential to a huge amount of damage, great with partners with good Hp & SpD, immunity to water (or ressistance at least) or Telepathy.

Strength + Submission: Slowbro's low Base Speed makes it a great user of this combination in a multiple battle, since it's almost guaranteed to move after a foe uses a Bodyblock. This lets it toss any foe into an ally regardless of their Weight Class (Slowbro's natural maximum is 5 due to its Attack Rank) into their ally to do significant damage to both. Slowbro's unique move's are odd, but have their own niches.

Snorlax's most defining features are its incredible bulk, solid stats, massive weight, and a relative lack of weaknesses. Immunity makes Snorlax impossible to wear down through Toxic, while Thick Fat gives it two very welcome resistances to shore up its Ghost immunity. In contrast Gluttony is just a perk. Snorlax is an excellent tank with a very broad Physical movepool augmented by a not-insignifcant backup of Special attacks. With the exception of Bug and Ghost, Snorlax has a Physical attack of every type. It's Special movepool is a little smaller, but does contain Electric, Fire, Ice, and Water attacks along with a few outliers like Psychic, Shadow Ball and Solarbeam.

Otherwise Snorlax is a classic tank, possessing little outside Snatch, Whirlwind, and Yawn for support. It's quite capable of retaliation however, with Bide and Counter, and attempting to escape it is futile, it has Pursuit and its Block is one of the strongest, inflicting 18 fixed damage when used against an evading opponent, and more if you give it a Weight increasing item. In fact since Snorlax's Speed is almost irrelevant, carrying an Iron Ball (+3 Weight) and using Fling and Recycle to augment Weight-based attacks can be quite effective. On that note, its Body Slam and Double-Edge are incredibly powerful, possessing 11 and 16 BAP unboosted, respectively. Curse works quite naturally with Snorlax's huge bulk, decent Atk, and low speed, and makes it much more difficult to defeat.

Snorlax's Weight can also be a liablity against foes with Low Kick and Grass Knot, which have 15 BAP in ASB against the heavyweight. Psychic in ASB is also effective when used by Psychic types (15 BAP), since they ignore the Special Attack Rank criterion (Also be wary of Confusion + Psychic combos from non-Psychics.). In general Snorlax is the kind of Pokemon you just have to be careful around, since it can afford to exchange blows more comfortably than most Pokemon, and special Fighting attacks are not usually reliable, making any Snorlax with Counter a nuisance. Burning helps a lot, as even with acceptable Special Attack Snorlax's bread and butter is using its high BAP-neutral Weight-based attacks to its advantage.

Snorlax has an excellent item choice between Rare Candy and Full Incense. Both give Snorlax the same Rank boost in Attack and Special Defense, but Full Incense also causes Snorlax to move last in its priority bracket and have a No Guard effect, allowing it perfect accuracy on its attacks and perfect accuracy to its opponents, a risky tradeoff that takes advantage of Snorlax's more diverse movepool and greater bulk than most opponents. Rare Candy on the other hand gives its Normal STAB some more punch, which combined with its massive weight is a significant power boost. Soothe Bell unfortunately gets left in the dust given Snorlax's stats.

Other Notable Attacks:

Belly Drum: As much as Snorlax enjoys its bulk, Belly Drum can turn it into a massive threat effortlessly in a single move. Since ASB Belly Drum grants 6 action immunity to Sleep and Confusion in exchange for this, it can be a very nasty surprise.

Selfdestruct: Snorlax generally doesn't lend itself to suicide, but it does have the option, and backed by STAB it can be an excellent way to go out with a bang.

Wild Charge: Thunderpunch is safer since it doesn't have recoil, but since Wild Charge is Weight-Based, it can often be worth it. Snorlax's Wild Charge has 13 BAP, much higher than Thunderpunch, but be careful of recoil.

Cool Combinations:

Body Slam + Giga Impact: A powerful combination that also preserves Snorlax's HP. Total BAP is 29, with a 30% chance to paralyze.

Screech + Snore: Since Snorlax is quite bulky and has only one weakness, while Resting it can take advantage of this Snore combination to weaken foes. It's 8 BAP, lowers the opponent's defense two stages, and gets STAB.

Shock Wave + Zap Cannon: Body Slam can usually paralyze given enough attempts, but Snorlax is another great user of this combination, and can benefit greatly from a slowed down opponent.

Steelix is a terrifying physical tank that can take a lot of abuse and dish it out. Between its huge Rank 8 Defense and Sturdy it laughs at any physical attack that either lacks STAB or has low BAP, even super-effective ones. Steelix is also on the high end of the Size scale, meaning its Dig can hit even Levitating Pokemon (though not Flying types proper), and it's easy for it to Bodyblock or for allies to Take Cover behind in doubles and above, even for Pokemon as large as Torterra and Beartic. The only downside is that Steelix will have trouble in constrained arenas, so do mind the arena size if you plan to use it.

Steelix's Sheer Force eligible movepool is immense, including physical attacks in Elemental Fangs, Rock Slide, Crunch, Iron Head, Iron Tail, and even special attacks like Ancientpower, Earth Power, Dark Pulse, and Flash Cannon. Its Taunt, while slow, is nonetheless effective in shutting down many foes, and it can happily bounce back attacks with Bide, or pressure foes with Sandstorm, Stealth Rock, Roar, and Dragon Tail in switch battles. Finally, Rock Head and Steelix's Weight make it an ideal user of Double-Edge and other Weight-Based Attacks. When it does finally get to low HP, Steelix has both Flail and Explosion to dish out immense damage before it faints.

Steelix's primary weaknesses are its low Speed and its weaknesses to common special Fire, Water, Fighting, and Ground attacks. Steelix has many incentives to run a Speed lowering nature, so the powerful, inaccurate versions of these attacks tend to hit more often. Grass Knot, Low Kick, and Psychic (if the attacker can lift Steelix's weight) are also quite effective because of their high BAP. Steelix isn't going to dodge unless it's using Dig, so while Taunt is effective at stopping Steelix's own Taunt, if you're not trying to damage Steelix it has no qualms damaging you while you mess around. Steelix is highly susceptible to Burn, although underestimating its Special Attacking movepool is not advised, Sheer Force makes a lot of difference. Its immunity to Toxic and Thunder Wave and resistance (either by huge defense or typing proper) to almost all paralysis chance inflicting moves make Steelix otherwise troublesome to inflict with status, and Bide causes foes its own problems with the fact it has priority. Steelix is troublesome at any health level, exercise caution in facing it. It's just one of those Pokemon whose matchups are either relatively equal or totally lopsided, usually in Steelix's favor.

Metal Coat boosts Steelix's already phenomenal Defense and gives its Steel type attacks a slight fixed damage boost, which can be useful given Steelix is generally more defensive than offensive, and Steel STAB is resisted by many foes.

Other Notable Attacks:

Gyro Ball: Steelix's low Speed and access to Curse make it an excellent user of Gyro Ball, which routinely hits upper BAP levels even against mid-speed opponents.

Magnet Rise: Steelix can rid itself of a vulnerability to several Ground attacks by using Magnet Rise.

Smack Down: Steelix starts it life out as an Onix with Smack Down, and its instrumental in keeping foes vulnerable to it's Ground-type attacks.

Iron Tail + Dragon Tail: Steelix is fairly susceptible to Counter. This particular combo hits the lowest priority bracket and has immense power, and because Iron Tail has the higher BAP (both are passive) it remains Steel type and thus eligible for STAB, plus the Sheer Force boost due to Iron Tail's Defense drop chance - while still phazing since that's a 100% effect.

Sand Tomb + Twister: This nasty attack hits all foes in a multiple battle and traps them for residual damage, it deals both Physical and Special damage, and as a bonus, the combination is Dragon type so nothing is immune to it. It also gets a Sheer Force boost on Steelix because of Twister's flinch chance. Only Flygon and Garchomp share this move.

Stratagem is a Pokemon that really breaks the mold, being a strong and swift Special Attacking Rock-type with its own signature move, Paleo Wave. It's aided in this role by its great Abilities, which help it maximize damage from Special Attacks that run into a lot of immunity abilities like Flash Fire, Levitate, and Sap Sipper.

Stratagem is trickier that most ordinary rocks, it doesn't have much in the way of status, but it can use Disable to prevent move SPAM against it. Otherwise Stratagem is a fast, hard hitter with average defenses and excellent special attacking skills. It's special offensive coverage includes Rock, Fire, Ghost, Grass, and Ground attacks along with smaller physical coverage with primarily Rock, Flying, and Ground attacks. A few outliers like Electro Ball, Flash Cannon, Hidden Power, and Vacuum Wave round the movepool out. Strategem greatly enjoys the Special Defense boost it gets in Sandstorm, especially since it can further augment its bulk and power with Calm Mind and give its Weather Ball STAB. Stealth Rock and Electric support attacks like Magnet Rise and Volt Switch complement the rest of Stratagem's movepool.

Stratagem actually gets little overall use out of Technician, save its boosts to Ancientpower, Mud Shot, Hidden Power, Ominous Wind, Swift, Vacuum Wave, and a few physical moves like Rock Blast and Aerial Ace. In general it has equally powerful counterparts, but it doesn't miss the diversity. Giga Drain is Stratagem's sole draining attack and method of HP recovery. Stratagem is a strong attacker, but it's mono-Rock type still leaves it vulnerable to all kinds of priority, and it doesn't enjoy getting into slugfests with Fighting types that combine high Attack and Special Defense. Without a counterattack or a phasing move at its disposal, Stratagem relies on high damage output.

Rare Candy increases Strategem's offensive potential greatly by giving it even stronger Special Attack and boosting its Rock Offense, which is especially helpful for Paleo Wave and Technician Ancientpower, with a small benefit to Strategem's Head Smash and Technician Rock Tomb.

Other Notable Attacks:

Explosion: It's always unfortunate to go out with a bang, but Stratagem can use the high BAP as well as anything else.

Rain Dance: While Stratagem shouldn't use this if its being hounded by a Water-type, its quite useful against Sun abusers who like to follow-up with Solarbeam. Stratagem can use the Rain with Weather Ball to do significant damage to Ground-type opponents as well.

Trick: Items are a bit harder to come by on the usefulness scale, but Stratagem can Trick them off quickly.

Cool Combinations:

Hyper Beam + Earth Power / Energy Ball / Flamethrower / Flash Cannon / Paleo Wave / Weather Ball: If you need a big typed hit, this is the best way to go.

Rain Dance / Sandstorm + Weather Ball: Opponents trying to use their lower Speed to get the weather advantage? This is an expensive, if effective way to surprise them, and can even be used while Taunted. You can also use Sunny Day with this, though Stratagem has plenty of Fire attacks at its disposal.

Snore + Metal Sound: If Stratagem gets sent to sleep, this combination does Steel-type damage and lowers the foe's Special Defense two stages, weakening it for Stratagem's next assault.

At first glance, Swoobat looks like a vendor trash mon. Underwhelming stats beyond speed, poor offensive and defensive typing, an absence of key moves like Bide, and only marginally helpful abilities. A player facing off with their first Swoobat might even consider it a free knock-out counter when sizing up a match.

This assessment is very, very wrong.

Swoobat has the distinction of possessing one of the most powerful user-dependent attacks in ASB. With Simple, Swoobat gains +2 SpA and +2 SpD from Calm Mind, and Stored Power feeds off of these boosts for tremendous effect. A Swoobat +6 SpA / +6 SpD carries a ballbusting 26 BAP, with 10.5 free damage tacked on after resistance from the boosts themselves. With Simple and Calm Mind, Swoobat can reach this level of damage with astonishing speed, sometimes even in a single round. The only concerns with Swoobat's setup are the foe's disruptive moves and Swoobat's own Energy limitations. With Klutz it can use Power Items and Macho Brace to great effect in setting up, then de-activate Klutz and enjoy the restoration of its Speed. It can also use Soothe Bell to enhance its offensive presence.

The rest of Swoobat's movepool is stocked with tricks to better facilitate the process of setting up. Support options like Screens, Fly, Magic Coat, Tailwind, Trick, Taunt, Thunder Wave, and Roost all help in specific situations where Swoobat could be crippled during setup. While Stored Power is Swoobat's primary means of offense, it has a varied offensive special offensive movepool including stand-outs like Air Slash, Psyshock, Charge Beam, Energy Ball, Giga Drain, Heat Wave, Hidden Power, Shadow Ball, and Signal Beam, along with Sky Attack as a powerful physical option, and Endeavor and Super Fang to weaken foes as higher HP levels.

Swoobat is notable for utility in multi-battles, boasting toys like Helping Hand and Telekinesis. Allies with Acupressure access receive special mention here; they can apply further boosts to Swoobat, +4 at a time, in stats Swoobat doesn't have time to boost. With this, Stored Power reaches truely horrifying destructive potential.

Soothe Bell gives Swoobat a much stronger offensive profile, increasing both its Attack and Special Attack, while Rare Candy gives its Special STABs more power. Rare Candy buffs its Stored Power and Future Sight by much more, making it a dedicated Special Attacker while Soothe Bell increases its mixed attacking potential.

Other Notable Attacks:

Psych Up: Useful for creating feedback loops between Swoobat and other users of Psych Up and Stored Power, passing boosts between teammates to keep up a steady stream of charged Stored Powers. This is also Swoobat's best tool against Krillowatt's Heart Swap.

Imprison: Locking away a foe's Taunt, Torment, and other such moves is a solid option against foes that carry Magic Coat and threaten to Taunt Swoobat's setup protocol.

Knock Off: An niche move that sees use against such things as Smoke Balls, which interfere with Fly's evasion, or against damage-boosting items that might threaten to put Swoobat in KO range too soon.

Cool Combinations:

Future Sight + Stored Power: You know what's scarier than a Stored Power right now? A Stored Power that arrives after action one next round! This turns Stored Power in to a massive amount of residual damage, giving you a 36 BAP ace in the hole against tricks like Endure.

Stored Power + Stored Power: Crikey. This is the finisher combo to end finisher combos. Depending on Swoobat's level of boosts, this can reach astronomical levels of power. Even at a mere +6 SpA and SpD, this reaches 58.5 BAP, which will put the fear of the divine in almost anything you point it at.

If there were a single Pokemon in CAP ASB that defined Hyper Offense, Syclant would be it. While Mountaineer keeps Syclant safe from a crippling Stealth Rock weakness and buys it a round of immunity to Rock attacks, the rest of its abilities are focused on pure unrelenting offense, and its Ice / Bug typing is not conducive to stalling whatsoever. One cool thing to do the first round is to have Syclant Bodyblock Command for non-spread Rock attacks aimed at allies.

To be sure, Syclant is not without its tricks. With Taunt, Spikes, and a quick Double Team Syclant does have the tools to offer some support to allies and protect itself. Otherwise though Syclant is a broad-ranging mixed attacker with Bug, Ice, Fighting, Ground, and Rock attacks, plus a few moves like Technician Aerial Ace, Electroweb, Water Pulse and Hidden Power to round it out. Technician backed Icicle Spear and Pin Missile can break Substitutes and also have Bug's guaranteed third hit on them, Ice Shard has priority, Leech Life can drain health and has a decent adjusted 9 BAP. Dig lets Syclant evade a slower attack, although even with resistance to Earthquake it doesn't want to get hit underground. Syclant can quickly augment its threat level with Hone Claws, Swords Dance, and especially Tail Glow. Needless to say it's even more monstrous in Hail with perfect accuracy Blizzard and residual damage wearing an opponent down. Finally, it can Counter physical attacks, so don't get too cocky.

Basically Syclant is going to Taunt you and then start breaking things, since its type doesn't lend itself to any other strategy. If you can avoid the Taunt that's great, if not use the opportunity to start whaling on it. Syclant hits hard and fast, and its stat boosters are no joke, especially Tail Glow. Use spread attacks when possible, Heat Wave is the most effective since it nullifies Double Team and almost always breaks its Substitute. A strong Pursuit is also effective at locking down Syclant into a 1-on-1 fight where it has to overcome the weaknesses its typing brings.

Rare Candy increases Syclant's offense all around. While it does increase its physical attack, the boost to its STAB Ice and Bug BAP can be utilized very effectively by Blizzard and Bug Buzz as well. Syclant is never displeased by anything that gives it more offense.

Other Notable Attacks:

Bulldoze / Icy Wind: It's only slightly weaker than Earthquake (or generally weaker than Blizzard) and it brings what few things are faster than Syclant down to its level, provided they aren't immune to Seismic attacks at the time.

Struggle Bug: It's boosted by Technician and it hits all foes in a multi-battle. Blizzard is stronger, but Struggle Bug works in every weather.

Venoshock: Give Syclant a chance and it can use Toxic, bringing Venoshock up to a very nasty 13 BAP. This is especially devastating combined with Tail Glow and Focus Blast to take out Rock and Steel Pokemon that resist or are immune to it, with STAB Blizzard for Ground resistors.

Cool Combinations:

Ice Shard + Icicle Spear: The combination is still eligible for the Technician boost because Ice Shard's BAP is halved, meaning it will do 6 + 4 + 4 (14 BAP) at a bare minimum, and have +1 priority.

Icicle Spear + Blizzard: The best way to capitalize on a strong spread attack is to also have it do trample damage. This also provides the attack with mixed physical and special damage, making it less susceptible to Counter or Mirror Coat (but the same to Metal Burst)

Spikes + Pin Missile: A Ground-type Pin Missile that uses Spikes for its pins, and sets up the hazard at the end to boot. Note it's used here over Icicle Spear since Icicle Spear implies Ice which would shatter on contact, while pins wouldn't. This attack also gets the Technician and Bug STAB boost. It also gets around opposing Taunt.

Tangrowth's physical bulk, enhanced by standard Grass-type recovery moves and its Regenerator ability, let it perform a variety of roles with little fear of KO before it can accomplish its goals. It's above-average attacking stats work well with its bulk to ensure it can dish hits just as well as it can take them, making it a fearsome opponent whether it's being offensive or defensive. It should be noted that, while Tangela achieves better defenses than Tangrowth with Eviolite, Tangrowth's better Attack and Hp stats allow it to be much more versatile than its pre-evolution.)

As the evolution of a Gen 1 Pokemon, Tangrowth has access to many, many moves that allow it to take advantage of almost any situation. It's physical movepool includes Ground, Normal (many of which utilize Tangrowth's high weight) and Rock moves along with Brick Break, Payback and Aerial Ace to supplement the coverage of powerful STAB attacks like Power Whip and Seed Bomb. Tangrowth's special movepool is slightly less robust, but allows for a few tricks such as Focus Blast and Shock Wave in addition to bread-and-butter options like Hidden Power, Solarbeam and Leaf Storm. As stated earlier, Tangrowth has access to most of the recovery moves that Grass-types utilize to stay fighting, namely Giga Drain, Synthesis, Leech Seed and Ingrain (in Switch=KO battles.) Other supporting moves include harassment options like Stun Spore, Sleep Powder, Worry Seed and Knock Off, and defensive moves such as Reflect, Bide,Sunny Day and even Amnesia to raise its otherwise disappointing Special Defense.

Rare Candy enhances Tangrowth's physical bulk even further and also increases the power of its physical and special STAB Grass attacks. Both boosts are quite valuable to Tangrowth, as it wants to restrict damage to it and heal more with Giga Drain.

Other Notable Attacks:

Block: Punishes Pokemon that use evasive moves, using Tangrowth's rather high weight to deal more damage.

Rage Powder: Allows Tangrowth to take any hits meant for its allies in multiple battles. Given Tangrowth's very high Defense, this can be essential for protecting squishier teammates.

Pain Split: An often forgotten option given Tangrowth's high Hp that is at its most effective after Tangrowth has KO'd a Pokemon (and lost most of its Hp) and a new, full-Hp one has switched in.

Cool Combinations:

Flail + Power Whip/Payback/Brick Break/Aerial Ace: Tangrowth can perform this combo as an incredibly powerful final attack at low health that has the potential to take off a significant portion of a foe's Hp.

Constrict + Bind/Tickle/Wring Out: Tangrowth has the unique distinction of being the only Pokemon who can utilize Constrict to its fullest potential. Combining Constrict with Bind results in doubling the Damage per Action of Bind to 4. While, with Tickle, the combo lowers the opponent's Attack, Defense and Speed by 2 stages each. Finally, Constrict and Wring Out combine with the effect of doubling Wring Out's BP, making the attack an ideal opener to any match against a Pokemon with high Hp.

Togekiss' versatility is what makes it such an amazing threat. It rips off a massive number of fairly unique moves like Aura Sphere, Extremespeed, and Sky Attack and combines them with very powerful abilities. Hustle makes its otherwise low physical attack fairly competent at the price of accuracy where its Rank 5 Special Attack does a lot of the heavy lifting. Togekiss' physical movepool is comprised of Normal, Flying, and Fighting attacks with a few oddballs in Rollout, Steel Wing, and Zen Headbutt. It's Special movepool is much more comprehensive with Normal, Flying, Bug, Fire, Ghost, Grass, and Psychic attacks as well as Hidden Power, Ancientpower, Aura Sphere, Twister, Water Pulse, and even Shock Wave and Zap Cannon for electric coverage. Not to mention Mirror Move in a pinch.

Togekiss also has a wide array of support options in Baton Pass, Encore, Heal Bell, Light Screen, Magic Coat, Reflect, Safeguard, Thunder Wave, and Yawn. It can also readily restore HP with Morning Sun, Roost, Softboiled, and Wish. It can even boost it's own offensive prowess with Nasty Plot. Finally, be cautious using physical attacks against Togekiss, as it can Counter them tight back. Ultimately Togekiss is good at dishing out and taking hits, and its most infuriating strategy is flinching paralyzed foes with Air Slash. It's coverage is such that there's no decent single Pokemon that works, but using Substitutes to avoid Paralysis and flinch is helpful, especially since Togekiss doesn't have any multi-hit attacks. Togekiss doesn't have any move limiting options like Taunt so aside from its support niche, it's a straight-up battle.

Shiny Stone patches up the accuracy of Air Slash while enhancing Togekiss's Special Attack. The boost is also enjoyed by many of its other inaccurate attacks like Fire Blast and especially its Hustle boosted Sky Attack and Mega Kick.

Other Notable Attacks:

After You: In multiple battles, messing with a foes attack order can be a very effective way of avoiding damage, especially if you can get a slower, stronger attacker to utilize their attack against an ally with substitute before a weaker opponent softens it.

Defog: Lowering a foe's Evasion can help Togekiss patch up the slight inaccuracy of Air Slash, as well as clear the field and remove opposing screens.

Stored Power: Works quite well with a Nasty Plot or two, quickly increasing in power if you let it get too many boosts.

Cool Combinations:

Aerial Ace + Body Slam: Excellent when used with Hustle, it changes the attack to Flying-type so it can hit Ghosts (and still has STAB), gives it -- Accuracy, and has a 60% chance to paralyze. Not too shabby.

Aerial Ace + Sky Attack: A slow but powerful attack that combines the best of Hustle and Super Luck, not to mention Serene Grace if the foe happens to be using something like Counter or Avalanche. 23 BAP (+ STAB), -- Accuracy, 60% Flinch, with a 25% Crit rate is none too shabby.

Extremespeed + Sky Attack: The Extremespeed boost brings the charge turn up to +3 and the actual attack up to +1, meaning not only does it avoid the weaknesses of the charge turn, it keeps that 60% Serene Grace flinch chance and 25% Super Luck boosted CH rate. If Hustle is active it has some accuracy issues, but if not it's impressive at 18 BAP Flying.

What can be said about Tomohawk? Sitting in top ten usage and prepared for in any serious competitive endeavor, what makes the Chieftain Pokemon so threatening?

On its own, Tomohawk is only okay. It can be said that, barring the lack of Endure or Sleep Talk, Tomohawk plays like an older-generation mon. It has acceptable coverage, covering the types Fighting, Flying, Fire, Ground, Grass and Hidden Power on the Special side. On the Physical side its coverage is rather limited, picking up only Rock and Ground coverage in addition to STABs. Prankster can also give its Nature Power priority on the called attack, which can be useful in a pinch, and combined with its solid bulk and priority support options like Confuse Ray, Haze, Memento, Morning Sun, Reflect, Roost, Taunt, and Yawn Tomohawk excels at team play. Tomohawk can also evade slower opposing attackers with Fly. But other than that, Tomohawk is a solid but fairly unremarkable single battler. So why is it so popular?

Put simply, Tomohawk contributes more to a team than almost any other mon in ASB. Even as it enters, Intimidate lowers the Attack of all present foes permanently unless they have an attack booster in their movepool, and Justified combined with a Dark resistance means an allied Beat Up can make Tomohawk a decent physical attacker as well. Additionally, its powerful offensive and defensive typing synergizes well with many other powerful Pokemon, and it carries a slew of powerful supportive moves that benefit the entire team. After You, Reflect, Tailwind, and Taunt are all the sweeter in a team setting, and attacks like Hurricane, Heat Wave, and SolarBeam give it a powerful foothold in weather-based teams. Moves like Baton Pass, Healing Wish, Baton Pass, Rapid Spin, Sky Drop, and become powerful supporting moves when each player carries more Pokemon into the fray. Tomohawk's Sky Drop has no weight limit due to Fighting-typing, making it especially potent for segregating foes like Metagross from the action. Overall, a team supported by a Tomohawk enjoys a powerful and adaptable ally that truly does look out for the good of the tribe.

One of Tomohawk's weaknesses is that it lacks Sleep Talk, meaning if you can put it to sleep in a team setting, it's only recourse is Snore. It can nullify its Electric and Ice weaknesses with a Prankster Roost, but usually it's vulnerabilities there can be exploited. It has above average bulk, but no effective means of returning attacks, so it can be beaten down with brute force. Tomohawk's own weakness to Flying attacks can be exploited by fellow Flying types.

Rare Candy greatly increases Tomohawk's offensive profile by boosting its STAB Aura Sphere and Hurricane to higher power levels, as well as aiding a decent number of its physical Fighting and Flying attacks.

Other Notable Attacks:

Quash: This gives the ability to pin down one opponent at Prankster priority in a multi-battle. Barring enhanced-priority moves, the target of Quash is sent to the dead last spot on the turn order that action, allowing allies to set up safely.

Sunny Day / Rain Dance: On a weather-based team, Prankster weather setup is too good to ignore, allowing the player to get passed a slew of weather-control attempts and maintain the weather they prefer.

Safeguard: A priority-enhanced block for the team against all forms of major status is welcome for almost all teams.

Cool Combinations:

Hurricane + Heat Wave: Picking up Flying STAB, this toy picks up both a 30% Confusion rate and a 10% Burn rate, patches up Hurricane's accuracy to a clean 80, and hits all foes.

Aura Sphere + Focus Blast A handier attacking combination than combining either of the attacks with themselves, this packs more power than Aura Sphere plus itself, costs less En, and doesn't suffer from Accuracy loss from Focus Blast.

Hyper Voice + Roar: After laying Stealth Rock, nothing racks up damage like an untauntable Phaze against all foes!

Tyranitar is a Pokemon blessed with an excellent stat distribution, a huge movepool, and dominance over the weather condition on the field. With an amazing 110 HP and Rank 4 Defenses, in addition to the Special Defense buff provided by it's own Sandstorm, Tyranitar is a difficult Pokemon to break. Tyranitar is also a Pokemon with the luxury to sacrifice some Speed to boost any of its other already high stats, and perhaps most importantly, not only can it take hits, it can dish them out. Tyranitar's movepool includes decent Physical attacks from every typeexcept Bug and Psychic, and its Special Movepool is only slightly more restricted. In general Tyranitar relies on its powerful Stone Edge and Crunch, with Pursuit to punish attempts to evade its wrath, and coverage when these methods prove ineffective,

For support, Tyranitar has Stealth Rock, Taunt, Torment, and Thunder Wave, with Dragon Tail and Roar to phaze foes out. Crucially, it can capitalize on its high defenses and slew of physical weaknesses by employing Counter, while its dark-typing guarantees its Special Attacks can't be bounced back for damage by Mirror Coat. Tyranitar also has access to a slew of stat modifiers, from Curse, Dragon Dance, Hone Claws, Iron Defense, and Rock Polish to Screech and Scary Face against opponents.

In general as long as you can successfully steer clear of Counter, Physical Fighting attacks are the best way to knock Tyranitar down. Special attackers are going to have a very difficult time, especially against any Tyranitar with a Special Defense boosting nature. Burn also significantly reduces Tyranitar's threat, just remember Tyranitar can also be utilized successfully as a mixed attacker.

Rare Candy increases Tyranitar's already frightening Attack to the next level, while also boosting the power of its Stone Edge and Crunch. While its boost to special Rock and Dark attacks is minimal, it does make its mixed attacking ability that much more dangerous.

Other Notable Attacks:

Body Slam: Tyranitar does have a hefty weight, and lacking other options, this can be a good filler move against foes Thunder Wave might not work against, or if Tyranitar is Taunted.

Focus Energy: Combines with Stone Edge to always Score a Critical Hit, and gives Tyranitar more power to deal with Screens if Brick Break would not be effective.

Whirlpool: Tyranitar's sole residual damage attack it can also lock in foes in multiple battles, where Tyranitar's powerful Rock Slide can shine.

Cool Combinations:

Aerial Ace + Dynamicpunch: With such high Attack, Tyranitar naturally enjoys a shot t deny opponents a move, and this patches up Dynamicpunch's Accuracy.

Payback + Dragon Tail: Combines the low speed of Dragon Tail with a STAB move that gets stronger if it goes last, and also picks up Dark STAB, it even mediates the accuracy of Dragon Tail slightly. It's also slow enough to get around Counter.

Snarl + Snore: If Tyranitar gets put to sleep, retaliate with this combination, which picks up Dark STAB, lowers the foe's Special Attack. It totals 14 BAP and even hits all foes in a multi-battle.

At a first glance, Volbeat looks nothing special. He looks like your run-of-the-mill Bug-Type with hopelessly mediocre stats, but a few okay abilities in the form of Illuminate, Swarm, and Prankster. Looking at this, Volbeat could be seen as just a generic Prankster abuser, just like his female counterpart—Illumise—however, there is something more. Something that allows Volbeat to become more than just a Prankster abuser. That something lies in a trinity that allows Volbeat to carry a niche that no other Pokémon in ASB possesses: Prankster, Power Lens, and Tail Glow.

It is this trinity that allows Volbeat to become more than just a Prankster abuser, but a competent Special Attacker as well, allowing Volbeat to hit +6 Special Attack in a single action. This may not seem much since other Pokémon with Tail Glow can do this, but Volbeat sets himself apart by carrying Prankster, making the set-up occur at +1 Priority, making Taunting him to stop his set-up, a futile exercise for most. After this set-up, though, the Power Lens fun does not stop there either. Unlike most other Pokémon, who are stuck with a speed handicap that can hinder them after set-up, Prankster off-sets this, as Volbeat can continue to use non-attacking moves at +1 Priority, some of these moves working off Volbeat's trinity very well. For example, Volbeat can Baton Pass the +6 boost off to a team-mate, Volbeat can even Trick the Power Lens off to an opponent, allowing him to gain speed advantage over most opponents, while crippling an opponent with lowered speed as well as potentially gain a beneficial item to him. He can also use Thunder Wave to gain speed advantage, but sometimes, swapping items can be more beneficial. Even then once you boost, you can always just go along the orthodox attacking method, allowing Volbeat to pack a mighty punch with his Special coverage consisting of Bug, Electric, Flying, Ghost, Grass, Ground, and Water moves, as well as the obligatory Hidden Power coverage that almost every Pokémon gets. Of particular note in Volbeat's arsenal is Giga Drain, which works with Tail Glow and addresses his mediocre frailty.

Apart from this Volbeat can also support the team by disrupting opponents with the aforementioned Thunder Wave and Trick, as well as Encore and Double Team, alongside general team support with the aforementioned Baton Pass, alongside Sunny Day, Rain Dance, Light Screen, Tailwind, Brick Break and Helping Hand. Volbeat can also support himself with Moonlight, Roost, and the obligatory near-universal moves that most Pokémon get, like Protect, Substitute, Rest, Sleep Talk, and Endure. Finally, Volbeat also has some lesser-used Physical coverage that still can get some use at times, which consists of Bug, Dark, Electric, Fighting, Flying, Ice, Normal, and Psychic moves.

Despite Volbeat's incredible synergy with the Power Lens, Volbeat is also a beneficiary of the Everstone, which boosts Volbeat's Special Defense to great levels, granting a Rank 5 Special Defense stat, as well as a +2 BAP Boost to his Bug moves; An effective Swarm that stacks with the ability: Swarm, and operates at any HP level. Despite the benefits it gives, Volbeat is generally much better off with the Power Lens, which not only gives Volbeat some more notable offensive presence, but also possesses great synergy with Volbeat alongside Prankster and Tail Glow, as if the item was designed for Volbeat to abuse.

It is not all sunshine though, as despite all this, Volbeat is still not scary enough to be a top-tier threat in ASB. His reliance on the Prankster/Power Lens/Tail Glow trinity to deal real damage to the opposition—despite being able to make up the lost action easily—still makes him a sitting duck for an action, making him vulnerable to a slower Encore, a phazing move that can wipe that +6 Special Attack boost in a heartbeat, and any other danger that comes with using a stat-booster, even Taunt if the opponent carries Prankster themself. Speaking of which, Taunt really hurts Volbeat's ability to cause mayhem, especially when Volbeat cannot learn Taunt, and if Volbeat was to be taunted, the best case scenario was if he got the Tail Glow up. Even then, depending on what you are using, just flat out attacking can simply down the pesky bug, since even after hitting +6 Special Attack, Volbeat may still not be able to win the damage race in the long term, depending on the Pokémon you are using. All said and done though, Volbeat can be a terrifying little firefly who not only possesses a powerful trinity that allows him to become a powerful attacker and supporter, but also has the ability to differentiate himself from other bugs with the ability to cause mayhem in several ways. Underestimate Volbeat at your own peril; for he can become threatening in a heartbeat.

Other Notable Attacks:

Counter: Given Volbeat's low physical bulk, and his weaknesses to Rock and Flying-types being predominately Physical-based, Volbeat can surprise his opponents and make them think twice about using Physical moves with this nasty weapon that is always a welcome addition to any Pokémon in ASB.

Struggle Bug: This, alongside Air Cutter, make up Volbeat's only multi-target moves, both of which gain in power from Tail Glow. Use this after a Tail Glow in Doubles + to inflict lots of damage on the opposition, as well as making their Special Attacks weaker.

U-Turn: Apart from resting before Taunt, this is Volbeat's only other way to escape a Taunt in a Switch=KO Match. Do be aware that it also wipes any Special Attack boosts he has made. This also allows a welcome free switch in a Switch=OK match, but does not retain all his conditions unlike Baton Pass.

Cool Combinations:

If Volbeat is boosting his Special Attack, combinations are, while boosting the power of his special moves, do not really take full advantage of an instant +6 Special Attack, unlike simple attacking. If you plan to use combos, however...

Bug Buzz + Struggle Bug: While not powerful on its own, combining Struggle Bug with Bug Buzz gives Volbeat a powerful 12 BAP move that hits all opponents in a Doubles + battle.

Focus Punch + DynamicPunch / Ice Punch / ThunderPunch: Disrupt an inattentive opponent with this high risk, high reward combo, that either has 25 BAP with guaranteed confusion—if it hits—or 23 BAP with elemental coverage; a way to handle those pesky Flying-Types that normally attempt to swoop on Volbeat's parade.

Volcarona is a unique pokemon, both competitively and in ASB. Blessed with a wonderful offensive typing in Fire / Bug, it can hit many Pokemon for at least neutral damage. It also has the stats to utilize it, having a great special attack as well as decent bulk with 100 HP, 3 Defense and 4 Special Defense.

It's special movepool consists primarily of Bug and Fire attacks, but also gets some coverage in Psychic, Hurricane, Gust, Solarbeam, and Hidden Power. It's physical attacks aren't too bad either, consisting of Fire, Flying and Bug attacks as well as Wild Charge, Zen Headbutt, Acrobatics, and Poison Jab, but is marred by Volcarona's low physical attack. Sunny Day greatly increases Volcarona's attack power, giving it signature Fiery Dance some kick and allowing it to fire Solarbeam at normal priority, not to mention allowing to heal even more health with Morning Sun. Volcarona can also restore HP through Giga Drain off its high Special Attack and Roost. Volcarona is also one of the best users of Quiver Dance, allowing it to boost its best stats all at once. It's support options are rather limited, but it does get Light Screen to buffer special attacks and Will-o-Wisp to cripple physical attackers, along with Magnet Rise to nullify the effects of Smack Down for their duration and Whirlwind to phase out foes or reset stats.

Despite these perks, Volcarona can rather easily be defeated with Rock type attacks, and can do little to discourage Rock types except with Will-o-Wisp and Solarbeam. Fire Pokemon are also a good bet, resisting both of Volcarona's STAB's and hitting her for neutral damage.

Rare Candy increases Volcarona's offensive prowess by a substantial amount, being particularly helpful in aiding its Fire Blast and Bug Buzz, while the Special Attack Boost itself makes Giga Drain stronger. Definitely not something to be trifled with.

Other Notable Attacks:

Fly: While not that strong, Fly gives Volcarona the opportunity to avoid an attack with its high speed if Protect isn't an option.

Foresight: A rather odd move, but it can be useful for ignoring evasive actions and allowing Fighting and Normal typed teammates to deal damage to Ghosts.

String Shot: Good for roleplaying actions, as well as slowing down the few pokemon that are faster than Volcarona.

Cool Combinations:

Bug Buzz + Struggle Bug: Hits all opponents with a strong bug attack and also drops all foes' Special Attack, with a chance at dropping Special Defense to boot.

Fire Spin + String Shot: A great combo that traps every pokemon in a doubles or higher battle, does residual damage, and slows them down.

Heat Wave + Hurricane / Silver Wind / Whirlwind: Need to hit everyone really hard? This combo hits all opponents on the field with a powerful attack. Do note however that pairing it with Heat Wave makes it a Flying move and a Bug move with Silver Wind. As a bonus, the accuracy of Hurricane increases and there's a 30% chance of confusion. A combination with Whirlwind on the other hand can phaze out all foes, which combined with the above combination makes Volcarona an excellent field controller in multiple battles.

Quiver Dance + Fiery Dance: An excellent stat-up that can be used while Taunted, with a 50% chance of raising Special Attack by +2 instead of +1.

Zangoose is an unusual mon in several ways. Taking cues from Ursaring, Zangoose can use its exclusive ability, Toxic Boost, to pump the damage of its physical moves while flexing a meaty boosted STAB Facade. Given that in ASB a Pokemon can also Toxic itself, Zangoose can permanently boost its offensive prowess rather quickly, the only drawbacks being against Pokemon that can nullify abilities, swap them, or happen to be using Venoshock. It can further power up with Hone Claws or Swords Dance, making it a truly frightening physical threat. Taking cues from Spinda, Zangoose is immune to the drawback of its triggered ability due to a corresponding defensive ability (Immunity allows Poisoning, but prevents the damage, making Toxic boost drawback-free). Taking cues from Absol, Zangoose has a vast attacking movepool with great coverage on both sides of the spectrum and a powerful disruptive supporting movepool. What, then, holds Zangoose back from achieving greatness? The truth, really, lies in its stats. Sitting at only above-average Attack and Speed, Zangoose suffers a deficiency in bulk and Special Attack that holds it back from fame and glory.

Zangoose's movepool, however, goes leaps and bounds to lifting it to competitive levels. Powerful attacking moves of types Fire, Ice, Electric, Ghost, and Fighting appear in both Physical and Special form. Zangoose's Physical side goes on to cover Rock, Dark, Bug, Dig, and a wide array of STAB Normal-type moves, from Facade to the twin priority attacks Quick Attack and Feint. Defensive options like Counter, Disable, Roar, Taunt, Thunder Wave, and Endure help shore up or abuse Zangoose's subpar bulk, and aren't undermined by Poison when abusing Toxic Boost and Immunity.

Everstone greatly increases Zangoose's threat level by pushing its physical offense up to Rank 6, while also increasing the power of its STAB Normal attacks. After a Toxic Boost its Quick Attack is particularly powerful, being boosted up to 8 BAP off Rank 6 Attack. Facade becomes absolutely lethal, working off Rank 6 Attack and 16 BAP total. It makes Zangoose a very fearsome foe.

Other Notable Attacks:

Endeavor: Zangoose is liable to lose in a straight-out slugfest, and must outplay an opponent and gain a turn advantage in order to come out on top. There will be times, however, when Zangoose will find itself at critical health against a healthy foe, and that's where this comes in.

Giga Drain: Zangoose only gets Grass coverage in Special form, but this move in particular gives Zangoose a huge jump on otherwise sturdy foes such as Rhyperior and Gastrodon.

Razor Wind: Razor Wind's defensive properties are often overlooked, and Zangoose's STAB on the attack makes it a worthy consideration when trying to fend off opposing priority.

Cool Combinations:

Double Hit + Facade / Feint / Payback / Pursuit: A common response to strong attackers is to set up a Substitute to blunt their attacks. This combination smashes right through that strategy utilizing Zangoose's most powerful drawback-free move, high priority that busts through Protect and Detect, or in Payback's case, a move that can smash through Ghosts. Pursuit is effective in the combination for Pokemon that happen to like being even more evasive after a Sub is set up. (It should be noted the attack can also be used with Close Combat, Fire Punch, Focus Punch, Ice Punch, Poison Jab, ThunderPunch, and X-Scissor for different typings.)

Double Kick + Mega Kick: Another Sub-trampler, this one happens to be Fighting-typed to mesh with the above combination, and actually has fairly low distribution. It also doesn't lower defenses like the above variant with Close Combat, and it's only slightly weaker. (18 vs 20).

Feint + Pursuit: This will get you that last shave of damage you need, no matter what. +2 Priority that ignores both protective and evasive attempts, this is the end-all of finishing pokes.

I am making placeholders for when I eventually have to move the list down. I've incorporated all the submissions I've received so far, plus a few more. If you have a specific threat you're experienced with please send it in.

For those of you would would like to PM entries, here's the format. You can C+P this directly and just replace the data.
A reminder of the format for submissions: